"There is no such thing as Unicorn Hosting"
- Matt Cutts

"Well.. yeah. What do you expect? Matt Cutts has an agenda. Of course he's going to say that"
- Unicorn Hosting Sales and Marketing Director

Robbie, you run a great site, a legendary site in its niche that has built up a massive following and fan base. I would love to see what you have to say.

You most likely won't be pitching us a 'controversial' service, and come across as a master of something that you are not.

Also, we all know what qualifies you, we ALL SEE IT, we all have seen it, we all have been there. That proof or respect from the 'general businessmen' is already there, we know what you can do.

Whether some people have issues or not with you on the boards, you now your business, there is NO question.

What makes anyone an expert? You know how many people have SEO blogs, companies, sell educational materials etc... Since there isn't a universal SEO test that is given and your score determines if you are an expert or not, or you get a masters degree in SEO lol, how do you guage if anyone is an expert or not. You take the information given and you either agree with it or not. Take it or leave it. Some people will agree, some might not. It's SEO, everyone has a different opinion. Who are you to determine if they are "worthy" to share what they believe to be correct with everyone else.

Generaly speaking, since there is nothing else to guage what an "expert" is, I would go off of his level of success. He seems pretty successful, so he must be doing something right.

Serps would be a pretty good gauge to determine whether someone had the slightest clue, wouldn't you think?

Pretty much any single example would suffice. There has been none, and and doubt we will ever see one.

i love this thread. :)

Ditto. I hope you re-consider, Robbie. :)

Education wise... if someone has other opinions of seo or seo hosting, I think we are all ears here.

I have used BD's host.... I just realized when doing it that, while I can SEO - I'm no god at at and I don't do it enough to benefit from his services.

In his case, he isn't an SEO Specialist, he is a hosting company that helps SEO specialists..

He is qualified because it's what he does... I could tell you about coding (as an example), but others could tell you far better than me, but they aren't going to tell you - that's the difference.

Self quote..... Instead of saying BD is wrong, has no creds, whatever. People should educate us, add to the topic, debate it if needed - but slam it isn't ever needed. Even if the person is wrong, it's called education for a reason - it's all around, from the creator of the thread to all of us.

This ends RIGHT FUCKING NOW... The next person to bring up the issue of how Baddog took credit for writing this article will be banned.

No I am not fucking around. These threads are not to turn into a bitch fest because you guys don't like this or that. We made it clear that we would be giving credit and extra push for the those who participated in this series. If you guys don't like it, SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTHS! I don't want to see it in this thread, or any further Educational Series threads from here on out.

This is the last time I will mention this.

You don't get serps by getting different IP A & C class nets approved by ARIN. You don't automatically get serps by setting up hosting at different datacenters and aggregating them to one control interface. That is where baddog's expertise lies. Fuck some people are dense.

Was away at XBIZ, will respond to real, on-topic questions as I agreed.


As was mentioned by someone earlier, covering your footprints is a good thing. So, yes on all of the above.

I think it has something to do with G thinking you are more serious. It is kind of like the theory that if you register your domain for 10 years, all things being equal, G will pick your site over the year-to-year renewal.

I am sure it all fits in their algo in some way, but how much is anyone's guess. Apparently Bruce Clay feels it has some significant weight. I know goodgirl had experimented with this before and had similar results.

I have a feeling you are not alone.

No matter what example I gave you guys would say it is not a competitive enough example. I can assure you that we rank well for phrases we want. We make sales. Giving you a specific example would only give info that serves no purpose. Like I said, I am not trying to sell anything.

You are a smart guy, I am sure you could figure out some of our phrases if you looked.

I re-read the original post 3 times and i still have no clue what it was about.

I think it was about something called HOST CROWDING, but i still don't understand what it is.

How is it relevant to SEO? Can you explain?

That's the great thing about logic, the burden of proof lies upon the party which makes the claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Example: I want to sell my meth for fags to "booty bump" on corner A. Now corner A already has a huge batch of faggot meth salesmen, I contact some dude to enable me to sell booty bump meth to horny fags on corners b-z.

Any more questions?

:1orglaugh Well done.

So you are saying that if same web host have two different clients going for the same keyword, then google will somehow penalize one of them?

Bump.... err wait.. it's a sticky.... nevermind.

Couldn't you guys take the Host Crowding argument to a new topic thread and leave this one untainted as Eric requested? It's a good subject to debate and learn from by others experiences and thoughts.

Maybe these Education Series could be locked as soon as they're posted.

First off, I am a customer of the Poster's service, and feel it offers a fair value.

I also have been recently subject to a MEGA-SUPER-GOOGLE sandbox penalty and lost thousands of first and second page placements, and more than half of my overall traffic.

Note: I DO NOT feel that 'SEO Hosting' was responsible for this ban.

However, the above quote is a very, VERY important read for ANYONE who is considering signing up for 'SEO' (or any other type of) hosting with the intention of crosslinking, link wheeling, or any other type of manual manipulation / link sculpting strategies.

Different IP's is a good start, which is what Gotwebhost provides. However, the nameservers on ALL these accounts (at least mine) are registered to...guess who?

This is a point of commonality.

Outside of this, so is your registrar, whois info, affiliate ID's, site plugins, templates, and all factors listed above and more.

Now, there is no PROOF that any of these factors have direct SEO implications, but if you think your a-b-c link strategy or 5 different IP's are fooling the big G, you're sadly mistaken. The creation of a truly 'organic' network in the purest sense is nearly impossible to achieve.

The networks I had created were what I though to be VERY organic and VERY well crafted, with all the above factors taken into consideration and more. Most importantly, all sites had UNIQUE, ORIGINAL content. This above ALL ELSE is KEY.

This network grew slowly and steadily for close to 2 years - till summer of 2009, when close to 400 varied sites were unceremoniously dropped over a frighteningly short 2 day period.

However, after careful examination, there were small, NEARLY undetectable points of commonality to most of these sites. These sent up a flag, and...well...you know the rest.

Bottom line: Be careful. It CAN happen.

And now, back to work...

I am not sure who you are, but it sounds like you probably have a plan with dedicated IPs. Just an FYI: All of those plans allow for private nameservers. If you need assistance with how to do that, please do not hesitate to ask.

Great post Lloyd

Hahahahahahha :D

If you don't mind me asking, what do you think were the points of commonality to most of your sites that google picked up on?

Google is a SPY AGENCY, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on them. If you DO beat the odds, it will be short lived.

To be honest, it's been 6 months and I'm still carefully trying to de-construct exactly what the penalty is and why it was applied.

Near as I can tell it was a combination of tracking ID's along with a very similar (but NOT identical) contact form and tos template used across the sites.

It has also occurred to me that I may have fallen under a blanket 'affiliate' penalty, whereby google determined that the sites in question were adding 'no real value' and therefore didn't belong in their SERPS - and used the points of commonality listed above to find them all.

Example:

- 8 sites with unique designs / original content which employ all discussed 'stealth factors' are in promotion of sponsor site A.
- 3 of these sites are on the first page of Google (with the other 5 in the top 100) along with sponsor A's site.
- Google notices these 8 sites have subtle points of commonality (ref codes, similar text, cms signature, etc) - and seem to talk a great deal about Site A.
- While these 8 sites break no Google Webmaster Guidelines, it's clear that there sole existence is simply to get the visitor to sponsor site A - and as quickly as possible.
- Big G asks the question "Why do we have 3 listings in our top 10 that are, for arguments sake, the exact same thing - this isn't helping our users"
- Big G also notices that these 8 sites have a lot in common with these 32 other sites - and that these 32 have a lot in common with these other 84 sites...and so on...and so on...
-You know the rest.

Of course, sites like these make up half the internet...lucky me getting caught.

I'm taking what happened as a glimpse into the 'future' of how Google will list results. The Big G is getting smarter and is relying more and more on factors such as bounce rates, time on site, and other 'user experience' type data.

In my mind, the Search Engine of the future (whatever or whoever that might be), will be a highly evolved machine that ranks sites heavily based on USER EXPERIENCE. This is likely the hardest thing for an SEO'er to manipulate, and it makes sense that a smart SE would key in on it.

Now, don't get me wrong, Content is STILL king, and on-site optimization, backlinks, and a sprinkle SEO 'magic' here and there all play a clutch role. And, if done right, can still get you to the top of the SE's...for now.

I guess the moral of the story is that websites that offer no real value (affiliate or otherwise) have got their work cut out for them.

My apologies Baddog, just checked my plan and there are indeed private nameservers available.

Good to know.

Funny you should mention it. I got info from an online university recently.

They have an online marketing bachelors and master's program. :winkwink:

:thumbsup :thumbsup

Hey baddog - GREAT post man! Quick question tho:

I run a network of 18 paysites, and I just switched to a dedicated hosting plan. I've left some of lesser-performing sites on the old hosting (which is a shared account). All my sites are currently linked together, with no outside link trades. (See here: www.misterpeabodyworld.com)

So just wondering if I should take every site in the network and get seperate hosting for each one? Or would just having the two hosts do? The idea of getting eighteen differant hosts, especially now that I've just switched to dedicated hosting ($500 a month, btw, as opposed to $20 a month for a shared account) seems daunting. Thanks!!

Useful link for basics on Search Engine Optimization http://bit.ly/cDmwyp

[If we understand the question] G has probably already seen the links between your sites. If the sites are different niches they are not competing for rankings, so it should not matter.

online university :Oh crap :warning

I was talking about a real school lol.

Gotcha, thanks! I understand now - you're saying the biggest advantage would be, SEO-wise, to the individual sites in the network. No problem. I was asking (in an unintelligible way, obviously) if this would help the NETWORK's SEO-ranking, and if having all my sites on differant IPs would help not just the individual site's rankings, but the Network as well (as in, when people search for the network's hame via Google).

Anyway, thanks!

that was very informative, thanks for taking the time to write it up.

It's Full Sail, I think. I lived in Orlando and know that they have a pretty nice campus.

They are an accredited university, I do know that much.

Here's the link to the Master's Program:

http://www.fullsail.edu/online/degre...keting-masters

Very cool, thanks for the read. :)

Wow, there's a disappointing surprise. DH added to the batch.

syc·o·phant (sĭk'ə-fənt, sī'kə-)
n. A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people.

[Latin sȳcophanta, informer, slanderer, from Greek sūkophantēs, informer, from sūkon phainein, to show a fig (probably originally said of denouncers of theft or exportation of figs) : sūkon, fig + phainein, to show; see bhā-1 in Indo-European roots.]
syc'o·phan'tic (-fān'tĭk), syc'o·phan'ti·cal (-tĭ-kəl) adj., syc'o·phan'ti·cal·ly adv.

canadians. black jesus loves you :thumbsup i just now caught this post cause its a sticky up top and i dont do this board thing everyday. i've been running paysites since 97 and was cashing checks from xpics, gamma, and serge long before that. now i go up to your shitty frozen country, film the indian girls most of you hate, and workout on the beach here in florida the rest of the month

Thanks for clarifying that.

I do "host crowding". I have 20 sites on one IP, and more than half of them are very similar. G has not penalized me and I have good placement on some decent keywords. I do get nervous sometimes about the sandbox although I fear algorithym rewrites more.

As to losing key #1 & #2 placements, that has happened to me in the past and it was one site on one IP on a shared host. G just decided my site and many like it just wasn't relevant any more.

Good post, I've got my sites spread out over class c's on dedicated IP's, I'm no seo expert but I'm a believer that it helps. I do take issue with the following quote (if Ive missed any clarification in further posts, forgive me, I didn't read past page 1)

As written that's not true. There's a few keywords that return more than 2 of my sites from the same nameserver/host/ip/whois etc. I checked one I could think of and found around 6 results in the top 100. One at number 1, one in top 20 and a few more somewhere between 30 and 100. It's not the most competitive keyword, only 3,350,000 results returned and maybe 75 visitors a day to the #1 listing.

Maybe google treats the super competitive terms differently or it wont return 2 of the same results from same server in top 10 or something, I don't know. I do believe host crowding plays a role but it's not as simple as stated, especially with the less competitive terms.

I quoted them. http://code.google.com/apis/soapsear...rence.html#2_3

baddog can you hit me on icq, wanna bang heads for a few mins :thumbsup

i have 5 different sites in the top 100 results on a very competitve term all under the same ip address.

Top 100 ??

Thanks Baddog, It answers a lot of questions I had about SEO.. Always like to read your posts..

Very good post will.

some other guys really help here, thanks for a nice thougt:)hs

if u want seo hosting stay away from yellow fiber

How many of you "SEO Hosts" use the same DNS for each client / domain unless they ask how to make them private?