According to Matt Cutts blog, dedicated IP address is not a factor in Google’s patented search algorithm. 97% of the websites use shared IP addresses. However, according to Bruce Clay’s article on this topic, 90% of web sites in the top 50 competitive search results have static IP address. Yes that’s right – for competitive keywords, sites with static IP addresses appear to be favored. Could both of them be right?

With IPv4, there only about 18 million addresses to go around, but there are over 3 billion websites and growing. So if everyone jumps on the static IP address bandwagon, there won’t be enough IP addresses to go around for all websites, at least until IPv6 is implemented. With Ipv6, there should be about 5,000 unique addresses for every square micrometer of the earth surface, however the internet is not yet on IPv6. I am sure Google will not want to get associated with a sudden shortage of dedicated IP addresses, atleast till IPv6 is in place!

However Matt Cutts and other search optimization experts have pointed out the importance of fast response times to Google bot queries, reverse IP lookups and the impact of association with bad neighborhood sites. If you are part of the 97% of websites on a shared IP address, do you know who you are sharing your IP address with? Are they porn, casino, pharmacy or good non profit sites? Are any of them spammers? If they are, your IP address has the possibility of being classified as a spammer.

You can look up who you are sharing IP address with at www.domaintools.com.

As for the 97% of website owners, don’t jump on the static IP bandwagon for a $1/month, as there aren’t that many to go around. Would you rather wait around till IPv6 comes around or Google patent algorithm documents get revealed? Or are you waiting to let the other 3% get the edge for competitive keyword rankings?

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