Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
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
-
Can anyone tell me why some of the top referrers to my site are porn site?
We noticed today that 4 of the top referring sites are actually porn sites. Does anyone know what that is all about? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup1 -
Why do some URLs for a specific client have "/index.shtml"?
Reviewing our client's URLs for a 301 redirect strategy, we have noticed that many URLs have "/index.shtml." The part we don'd understand is these URLs aren't the homepage and they have multiple folders followed by "/index.shtml" Does anyone happen to know why this may be occurring? Is there any SEO value in keeping the "/index.shtml" in the URL?
Technical SEO | | FranFerrara0 -
Does using data-href="" work more effectively than href="" rel="nofollow"?
I've been looking at some bigger enterprise sites and noticed some of them used HTML like this: <a <="" span="">data-href="http://www.otherodmain.com/" class="nofollow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a <="" span="">Instead of a regular href="" Does using data-href and some javascript help with shaping internal links, rather than just using a strict nofollow?</a>
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Using the word "FREE" in domain name
Hi, This may seem like a simple question but a new client of mine wishes to use a domain name with the word "free" in it. The website will offer free activity vouchers. I couldn't see this being a problem as there a lot of websites that do this although he was told it may present a problem with the search engines thinking the site was spammy. It won't be and will be offering information and vouchers on local sporting activities. I was wondering if anybody could clarify this please so I can give him a more definitive answer to his question. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | malinkymedia0 -
Why crawl error "title missing or empty" when there is already "title and meta desciption" in place?
I've been getting 73 "title missing or empty" warnings from SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic. This is weird as I've installed yoast wordpress seo plugin and all posts do have title and meta description. But why the results here.. can anyone explain what's happening? Thanks!! Here are some of the links that are listed with "title missing, empty". Almost all our blog posts were listed there. http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-here-for-good/ http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-socially-awkward/
Technical SEO | | JasonDGreat
MaeM3.png TLcD8.png
0 -
Hyphenated Domain Names - "Spammy" or Not?
Some say hyphenated domain names are "spammy". I have also noticed that Moz's On Page Keyword Tool does NOT recognize keywords in a non-hyphenated domain name. So one would assume neither do the bots. I noticed obviously misleading words like car in carnival or spa in space or spatula, etc embedded in domain names and pondered the effect. I took it a step further with non-hyphenated domain names. I experimented by selecting totally random three or four letter blocks - Example: randomfactgenerator.net - rand omf act gene rator Each one of those clips returns copious results AND the On-Page Report Card does not credit the domain name as containing "random facts" as keywords**,** whereas www.business-sales-sarasota.com does get credit for "business sales sarasota" in the URL. This seems an obvious situation - unhyphenated domains can scramble the keywords and confuse the bots, as they search all possible combinations. YES - I know the content should carry it but - I do not believe domain names are irrelevant, as many say. I don't believe that hyphenated domain names are not more efficient than non hyphenated ones - as long as you don't overdo it. I have also seen where a weak site in an easy market will quickly top the list because the hyphenated domain name matches the search term - I have done it (in my pre Seo Moz days) with ft-myers-auto-air.com. I built the site in a couple of days and in a couple weeks it was on page one. Any thoughts on this?
Technical SEO | | dcmike0 -
What are the pros and cons of moving one site onto a subdomain of another site?
Two sites. One has weaker sales. What would the benefits and problems for SEO of moving the weak site from its own domain to a subdomain of the stronger site?
Technical SEO | | GriffinHansen0