In web positioning there are no irrefutable truths. Everything evolves, everything changes and everything is the subject of continuous study when it comes to finding out what Google considers important or not.
In this sense, there is a web aspect that, although elementary, has generated special debate regarding how its characteristics can influence both local and global SEO positioning; the IP address.
Therefore, in this post we are going to do a brief conceptual review to remember what an IP address is and how we can know it to, finally, know how it influences SEO.
What is and how to know the IP address of a website?
Before reviewing the different conclusions that have been drawn in recent years about the influence of the IP address on SEO, let's take a step back to position ourselves conceptually.
But more than defining in detail what the IP adress, a concept of which you will find many other sites that speak at length, I think the most important thing is that we distinguish between their types.
➽ IP address classes
- Public IP: This is the one assigned to us, by default, randomly from time to time or every time we restart the router.
- Private IP (class A, B and C ranges): On the contrary, this IP is fixed for each device, and has different ranges depending on the number of connections required (from more to less).
- IPv4 and IPv6 addresses: This typology is the one that concerns us here when we talk about knowing the IP address of a website, and they differ in the number of bits (32 and 128 respectively).
➽ Know the IP of a website
The answer to this question varies depending on whether we are talking about a public or private IP because, for example, for a public IP address we only have to go to a tool dedicated to it, such as Cyberprotector.
For its part, how to know the private IP address of a website will depend on what your laptop or desktop computer model is:
- Know private IP in Windows: By pressing the Windows symbol key next to the R key, and after opening the run box, type CMD and press Enter, the command window will appear where you have to type 'ipconfig'. Then, you will know the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
- Know Private IP on MacOS or Linux: You have to type in the command console 'iconfig' so that the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (inet and inet6) appear or, in the case of Mac, access the advanced options of the system preferences.
Does the location of an IP address influence SEO?
Although today we cannot determine that the IP address is within the list of SEO factors More relevant, there have been a number of beliefs in recent years about its influence on a possible penalty by Google.
➽ Dedicated IP vs Shared IP
In this sense, it has come to be considered that having a dedicated (and not shared) IP has certain benefits with respect to SEO. But not so much for its not linking to other suspicious sites, but for other associated benefits; such as the easy configuration of the SSL certificate (always preferred by Google) or its higher performance in terms of loading speed.
On the contrary, and leaving aside the idea that we could fall on the Google blacklist by sharing the IP address with suspicious sites (which would mean that the Internet giant is on the hunt for the mouse and the cat), we could say that sharing IP could cause a crash in traffic spikes on large web pages.
➽ Consequences of location or IP changes
On the other hand, it has been questioned whether the fact of changing the IP address (that is, migrating your website to another hosting service), can also affect all the previous positioning work. However, there is research done in this regard that dismantles this theory (although, obviously, there are cases and cases, and a decrease in quality on the server or other aspects of local SEO could influence).
In any case, having researched on the subject and based on my own experience, I must conclude that, although each case must be studied, hiring the hosting server in one country or another should not, a priori, be a determining factor when it comes to to get a worse or better position in the SERPs.
