The IP popularity It is an indicator used to quantitatively examine the links from different servers. Links have a higher value if they come from different servers or different Class C networks.
General information
Typically, IP popularity is discussed along with domain and link popularity. While the former is based on the number of links from different domains, the latter is a parameter for the number of incoming links from the same domain. Thus, we have to distinguish between the number of links in a domain (link popularity), different domains (domain popularity), and several different servers on different class C networks (IP popularity).
Practical relevance
The bottom line of this is link building in SEO offpage. When generating a backlink profile of a web page, it is usually the case that many links originate from the same host. Servers on this host usually have the same class C masks, also called subnet masks. Class C networks are IP addresses that have the same range of network addresses.
IP addresses always consist of two parts, in which the first digits of this address designate the network and the last, the PC that is connected to the network. When data is sent over the Internet, it is first passed over the subnet and then routed within the network to the PC.
To gain IP popularity, the backlink profile must not include the same subnet as much as possible, in other words, different server addresses from different hosts. Only then will this parameter be high and the position of the respective web page will be better than that of the links from the same servers with the same host addresses. To establish the popularity of IP, the backlinks have to be analyzed. There are free and paid tools that do the job. Backlink inspectors check the number of incoming links and their origin.
Relevance for SEO
Google probably uses IP popularity as a ranking factor to exclude many links in a link network from directing to a particular web page. Google thus tries to avoid strengthening backlink profiles through proprietary networks (see Black Hat SEO).
If you link from a single network to your website, Google suspects unnatural link building and counts these links to your site as a single link. The page can even be penalized when this type of link building is obvious and carried out on a large scale.
Natural link building, however, is characterized by different network directions to suit people's natural recommendations. Network addresses do not have to be geographically separate, but they must have different class C masks. The underlying assumption is that websites in the US, for example, that refer to each other via links, have a greater popularity, than a reference from Thailand to a US web portal, which may have occurred through a link exchange and is not a sensible recommendation, because the web is of interest to specific users.
