It's really interesting to see how the practice of search engine optimization has evolved over the 15 years I've been in the industry. No longer are discussions about keyword density, title tag optimization or link juice the only things you hear about - today it's about content, authority, experience, etc. (as it always should have been).
Despite the progress the industry has made in terms of its sophistication, there remain a handful of myths that for some reason remain difficult to shake. One of the most pervasive is that an enterprise or brand's website should be kept separate across different IP blocks. Years ago, the idea was that search engines would penalize (or at least not reward) sites whose links all come from one IP range. I'm not really sure that pursuing this tactic ever really mattered at all, but SEOs received some conformation recently that it doesn't.
In a recent Google Webmasters Hangout, one webmaster in attendance asked the following....
All of our group's websites share the same C-block. Can cannibalization occur between different websites sharing the same hosting? Can site B's ability to rank be impaired by the fact that site A is trying to rank for the same set of keywords?
John Mueller, in response, said...
"No, absolutely not. It is perfectly fine. That is not something where you need to artificially buy IP address blocks to just shuffle things around. And especially if you are on a CDN, then you will end up on an IP block with other companies as well. Or if you are on shared hosting then these things happen. That is not something that you need to artificially move around."
And there you have it - myth (finally) debunked.
