Does my "spam" site affect my other sites on the same IP?
-
I have a link directory called Liberty Resource Directory. It's the main site on my dedicated IP, all my other sites are Addon domains on top of it.
While exploring the new MOZ spam ranking I saw that LRD (Liberty Resource Directory) has a spam score of 9/17 and that Google penalizes 71% of sites with a similar score. Fair enough, thin content, bunch of follow links (there's over 2,000 links by now), no problem. That site isn't for Google, it's for me.
Question, does that site (and linking to my own sites on it) negatively affect my other sites on the same IP? If so, by how much? Does a simple noindex fix that potential issues?
Bonus: How does one go about going through hundreds of pages with thousands of links, built with raw, plain text HTML to change things to nofollow? =/
-
@Tom Roberts, your thinking is about on the same page as mine. I've always been suspect of "C-Blocks" as a ranking too. I don't use a CMS for this site, as I said it's all hard coded. Does the nofollow tag in the head section have the same effect as a nofollow on individual links? At least PHP could solve that issue pretty easily.
-
Hi Ethan
In theory - yes it could. We know that Google looks at a domain's Class-C IP level (at least - now that Google is a registrar it may extend to the full IP) when judging its quality. If a site is in a "bad neighbourhood" - ie sitting on an IP range with a number of 'spam' sites - then theoretically it could be affected, as a kind of guilty by association.
However, in reality I have some doubts as to whether this would happen. The fact is that the vast majority of the web uses shared hosting (particularly sme's) and so good sites are invariably always going to be mixed in with 'bad' sites. And what's stopping me from deliberately making a bad site on your IP in order to 'poison it'? I'm no way near that evil, but someone might be.
What I'm getting at here is that it seems extremely unlikely that there is a manageable way to differentiate these sites efficiently - which leads me to believe that having your spam site on the same IP as some 'good' sites _shouldn't _make a difference.
What you can do to reduce this risk even further would be to make sure the 'spam' site doesn't link to any properties of yours that you want to protect, to nofollow those links if feasible (not sure what CMS you're using but WordPress has a few plugins that would do this on bulk) and, if it isn't required, noindexing the site would pretty much get rid of all risk completely.
Hope this helps!
-
If you don't use the site in Google, you should noindex it just to clear up any potential issues (especially if the domains link together in any way.)
- Bonus: How does one go about going through hundreds of pages with thousands of links, built with raw, plain text HTML to change things to nofollow? =/
Download the full site and open all the pages in Notepad++. Find & replace. Save, reupload.
-
Hi Ethan,
I will say yes & no. Please watch below Matt cutts video on the exact issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsSwqo16C8s&noredirect=1
I hope it helps.
Thanks
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Search Console "Text too small to read" Errors
What are the guidelines / best practices for clearing these errors? Google has some pretty vague documentation on how to handle this sort of error. User behavior metrics in GA are pretty much in line with desktop usage and don't show anything concerning Any input is appreciated! Thanks m3F3uOI
Technical SEO | | Digital_Reach2 -
Does rel="canonical" support protocol relative URL?
I need to switch a site from http to https. We gonna add 301 redirect all over the board. I also use rel="canonical" to strip some queries parameter from the index (parameter uses to identify which navigation elements were use.) rel="canonical" can be used with relative or absolute links, but Google recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. So here my question, did you see any issue using relative protocol in rel="canonical"? Instead of:
Technical SEO | | EquipeWeb0 -
How do I add "noindex" or "nofollow" to a link in Wordpress
It's been a while since I've SEOed a Wordpress site. How do I add "nofollow" or "noindex" to specific links? I highlight the anchor text in the text editor, I click the "link" button. I could have sworn that there used to be an option in the dialogue box that pops up.
Technical SEO | | CsmBill0 -
"Daily Special" = Duplicate Content?
I believe this has been addresses and answered previously, but despite searching the Q&A archives, I was unable to find the question and answer. So, please be gentle and patient: We have an eCommerce site with several hundred products, most of which use the structure: www.mysite.com/subcategory/itemA.html. We wish to feature itemA as a "daily special" item, and our Magento developer has recommended: www.mysite.com/internet-daily-special/**itemA.html ** Because itemA.html is the same page—albeit following a different path—will Google see this as duplicate content? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RScime250 -
I always get this error "We have detected that the domain or subfolder does not respond to web requests." I don't know why. PLEASE help
subdomain www.nwexterminating.com subfolder www.nwexterminating.com/pest_control www.nwexterminating.com/termite_services www.nwexterminating.com/bed_bug_services
Technical SEO | | NWExterminating0 -
Why is an error page showing when searching our website using Google "site:" search function?
When I search our company website using the Google site search function "site:jwsuretybonds.com", a 400 Bad Request page is at the top of the listed pages. I had someone else at our company do the same site search and the 400 Bad Request did not appear. Is there a reason this is happening, and are there any ramifications to it?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Should I change these "Overly dynamic URLs" ?
Hello, My client have pages that look like this: www.domain.com/blog/index.aspx?blogmonth=1&blogday=10&blogyear=2012&blogid=256 Question 1: SEOMoz say they are overly dynamic. Is it really in this case as the numbers indicate the year, month and day and do not change? Question 2: Should we change the URLs to proper SEO friendly URLs such as www.domain.com/keywords1-keyword2? The pages are already ranking well and we worry that changing the URL may damage the ranking? Do we risk the page to go down in ranking by creating SEO friendly URLs? (and using a 301 to redirect from the old URL)
Technical SEO | | DavidSpivac0 -
Having both <title>and <meta name="title"...> on a web page?</title>
Hi All, Client of mine using reversed Meta Tags format in their website and Honestly i never saw such Meta Tags formats. In my opinion having 2 Title tags and wrong reversed description tag is not correct and the needs to be removed, and other tags need to be changed,too But they said that it probably doesn't make a difference because they don't think it affects search engine results and won't remove it just based on opinion. Because weird thing is Search Engines are apparently able to index them. So should i persist on correcting them or just hope for the best and ignore it?!?!?! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0