One of the tactics employed by Search Engine Optimisation Marketers is to create their own link network of niche sites that contain pages that rank well for certain keywords. All these sites are operated by the same marketer, and are used to boost the inbound link popularity of other pages within their network. These sites still need to maintain strong rankings in their own right, but owning your own link network can give you some extra inbounds for a little boost, and every little boost counts.

Networked sites on the same webhost

Being the paranoid bunch they are, SEO Marketers speculate that Google’s algorithm takes the webhosting location of sites in a link network into account. Basically, if sites are on the same C-block IP, there’s a chance they’re on the same hosting account, and being managed by the same person. Google may view this relationship with suspicion.

Whether google checks C-block IPs is debated. Whether google penalises for it, or not, is also contested.

SEO Marketers trick Google by hosting on different C-Block IPs

Regardless, there are webhosting companies sprouting up capitalising on this speculation, offering hosting packages with different C-blocks. This way you can manage all your networked sites via the same provider, but Google won’t know it’s you.

But don’t use the same Google Analytics account

Putting on my aluminium foil hat, I wonder whether tracking your link network sites with the same google analytics account is a dead giveaway to the omniscient one?? Does Analytics data be fed into Google’s algorithm. Or are the index, ranking and analytics dbs totally silo’d??

What do you think? Am I just being paranoid, or is google able to take advantage of owning the world’s data to reduce the effectiveness of sneaky seo marketing tactics?

Your conspiracy theories, hearsay and rank speculation are all welcome.