Please note: Although PBNs still work, Google has started to target them. Meaning they are likely not the safest option moving forward. Which is why we currently focus on starting businesses that don’t only depend on SEO and leverage different traffic sources.
Greetings fellow NoHatters, this is Han here with my first post on NoHatSEO.com. I’m handling all the technical aspects of NoHat and have gotten a TON of questions about how we host our massive private network of sites, so I figured I’d take a moment on a sunny Californian day to write about how we easily get unique C block IP addresses for our private blog network sites.
As you may know, unique C block IP addresses is a big deal for SEO; if a money site only has backlinks from a single C block, each additional backlink from the same C block is devalued. However, getting unique C blocks is not easy, and usually requires having accounts at many different shared hosting companies. Unfortunately, that is both a logistical and financial nightmare – not only is it difficult to keep track of all your account logins, passwords, and matching which domains are on which shared hosting account, it’s also just really expensive to keep up.
One of our closely held techniques is simple yet devastatingly effective – use reseller hosting accounts. For those of you won’t don’t know, a reseller hosting account is usually geared towards web professionals, like web designers and developers. These people usually build websites for their customers, and as a result the finished product will need a place to live.
HostNine
We take advantage of the basic reseller account at HostNine and it is AMAZING. With datacenters in three different states in the US along with England, the Netherlands, and Singapore, they allow us to have a significant amount of IP and geographic diversity without the hassle of registering for multiple web hosts, which greatly reduces the time required for upkeep and asset tracking.
Basically all you need to do is create reseller subaccounts for each site, and assign it to a different colocation zone (6 total). Each colocation zone has a variety of C blocks as well – we’ve gotten at least 3 different C blocks per colocation zone. We currently have 21 different unique C blocks through one reseller account, and we are confident more are possible, it’s just a matter of being patient and waiting for more servers to be set up or existing servers to be vacated. The cheapest reseller account is $18.95/month and allows 100 subaccounts, so there’s tons of room as well as a ton of value.
The control panel is the industry standard cPanel so there’s no learning curve. We haven’t experienced any downtime, customer support is intelligent and responsive, and low price easily makes this our #1 recommendation.
IXWebHosting
These guys allow up to 15 private IP addresses which is substantial – other hosts are very reluctant to give out any private IP addresses unless you have an SSL certificate purchased for payment processing, usually e-commerce sites. This is great especially if you’re anal about having private IP address (we aren’t).
Unfortunately their control panel (Parallel’s HSphere) is terrible, so be prepared for an eye-sore and some user unfriendliness. Support and uptime is good though, but the price offers less value than HostNine. We use them because there’s still a limit to the number of IPs that HostNine can provide, and it gives us additional IP and geographic diversity along with a backup in case HostNine ever does go down.
DreamHost
We use Dreamhost’s shared hosting for a portion of our sites. A little known benefit of Dreamhost is that for each new domain that you add for them to host, it has the potential to get assigned a unique C block IP address from your other current sites! Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen EVERY time, and letting a couple of days elapse between setting up each new site helps a lot for making sure the IP will change, but it’s still an effective strategy that has saved us a ton of effort and money. Best of all, since they host so many other websites, it’s basically impossible to figure out which ones are on a network and which ones are just mom and pop sites, so you blend right in.
We’ve been on Dreamhost for awhile now and have had great results. They offer unlimited everything, minimal downtime, speedy connections, rotating IPs, and excellent customer service, so we’re confident they’ll be very helpful for hosting your PBN since we trust them to host ours.
If you use the promo code NOHATSEO10 when you check out, you’ll get an extra $10 off an annual subscription (unfortunately that’s the shortest subscription duration they offer, there’s no monthly plan that I’m aware of)!
In addition, we’re refining a script that automates the process so you can be sure to always get a new IP when adding a domain. I will post back here with an update when that’s ready for public use – it’ll only be available to people who use our promo code though, so please take advantage of the discount! Also, make sure to sign up for the mailing list as well so you’ll be notified when the script is ready.
** Update ** Looks like there was some confusion, my apologies – this is a feature of the SHARED Dreamhost plan, in fact we think that the VPS / Dedicated solutions would actually not have this functionality. Also, there is no need to purchase the $5/month “Unique IPs” that Dreamhost offers. Unique IPs in this case actually mean Private IPs and are used exclusively for signing SSL certificates, mostly for e-commerce sites that handle credit card information. Hope that makes more sense!
Just for interests of full disclosure, these ARE affiliate links and we would really appreciate it if you used them, but of course you don’t have to. We absolutely use all of these hosts and that’s why we’re able to recommend them wholeheartedly.
Hope these providers can help with your PBN hosting needs! If you have other hosting suggestions to share with similar qualities, we’d love to hear them, just leave a comment below.
Elson says:
Nice! Anxiously waiting for your script.
Btw how many sites do you guys host on 1 account?
Any opinion on G not updating the pagerank for about 6 months now? Would love to hear opinion from you guys as you guys are Big on domain purchasing :)
Thanks
Han Chang says:
We currently have double digits domains hosted on a single Dreamhost account; we don’t foresee getting multiple accounts though since it won’t help with IP diversity, plus the shared hosting is unlimited anyways so there’s no benefit in any other way either.
The PageRank update should be happening soon, the last one was February 4th 2013 so it’s long due. We don’t really value PageRank highly anymore so the lack of an update isn’t a big deal to us. The Page Authority and Domain Authority metrics from Moz have been an excellent substitute.
JP says:
Dreamhost is slow and has dns issues, it is also $5 per extra ip… But if you insist on using them google shows lots of coupons, here is one for $40 off: MADHATTER
maxime sincerny says:
Do you mean +5$ per month, per year, one time fee? The 2 last options are worth it since the lowest I found was seohost at 30$/month for 15 domains. So a whooping 360$/year and I have 5 more pr site to host waiting
Han Chang says:
What we’re saying is that additional domains added on the same shared hosting account on Dreamhost has the potential of being assigned on a different C class IP block – as a result, there is no need to buy the unique IPs for Dreamhost, as those are actually private IP addresses used only for SSL connections.
Danny says:
SEOhosting.com works as well. Thanks for sharing the code — will check back in for the update
Drew says:
Does it matter which hosting plan @ Dreamhost? Will shared hosting work, for this purpose?
Han Chang says:
Shared hosting is the plan we recommend since it’s the one we use and is the most cost effective; we’re not even sure if the other plans will have the same behavior…
Hendrik says:
I just bought an expired domain and created 5 pages with decent content, 700 words on average. The domain used to be used for the same niche I’m tageting. The site has been up for a couple of days, robot.txt and sitemap check out fine – however, I don’t seen any search queries listed in webmaster tools. The last site I created was done on a new domain and ranked within 2 days.
Does anybody have a theory on that?
maxime sincerny says:
I know that right now having only 1-3 high pr links can be really powerful over a lot of links.
Having a High Pr domain in the same niche doesn’t mean that the keyword you target was targeted on the first page and make it more difficult to rank for the term you want
A high pr domain should be used as a link to your money site in my opinion.
+ you have to look if the website is penalized in any way.
Hendrik says:
Hmmm…pages (even the older ones from the previous owner) are starting to show in the index. What would be a sign of a previous penalty?
Han Chang says:
I’d recommend checking Ahrefs to see how the backlink profile looks. If there’s a lot of spammy backlinks and/or the anchor text distribution looks unnatural it’s likely that the domain has been previously penalized and that’s why the original owner dumped it.
maxime sincerny says:
Took your coupon waiting for your script :)
Ashish says:
Since dreamhost allows only 5 mysql databases that means I can host only 5 wordpress websites on their $9 per month plan. Which is the plan that your suggest is the best
Hayden says:
Actually Dreamhost allows unlimited MySQL databases – http://www.dreamhost.com/unlimited-policy
We’re on the $9/month shared host plan and that’s the one we recommend.
Ashish says:
sorry my bad it was mentioned as “mysql 5 databases” and i misread that
Jimbo says:
Trying this out! I just got one site up and going. The question is how long do you advise to wait until adding more?
I’ll try adding another tomorrow and see if the IP location changes
Han Chang says:
When we started off waiting just a day was enough, now we’re waiting up to three days but that’s most likely because we’ve cycled through a lot of their existing IPs already – this is for around 20 sites.
Mike says:
Hey Hayden!
With the recent Google updates, don’t you need unique hosts/website? (Like Becker mentions)
Dan says:
How would you go about checking your IP address?
Han Chang says:
I use the ping command (both Mac and Windows has it), but if you prefer you can use something like getip.com as well.
Basically just add the domain in Dreamhost, then check it with ping or getip.com; if it shows an IP address you already have sites on, then delete the domain and try again tomorrow. If it shows a new IP address, rejoice and write it down somewhere. :)
Dan says:
Thanks Han, I’ve registered an account and I’m ready to go.
Just out of curiosity, how on earth did you figure this out?
Also, one more point. If you’re hosting an entire PBN, won’t the fact that the nameservers are pointing to whatever.dreamhost.com be a possible drawback?
Thanks again,
Dan.
Han Chang says:
Trial and error has been good to us :P
Keep in mind that every single website hosted on Dreamhost will use the same nameservers as you do. Since they host almost 1.25 million domains (http://www.webhosting.info/webhosts/reports/total_domains/DREAMHOST.COM) we feel pretty confident about staying under the radar. That said, we distribute the sites on our private network amongst a lot of different shared hosts to make sure that there’s host diversity in backlinks to money sites (both our own and our clients), but we’re very confident about hosting double digit numbers of our sites with them as long as we have other hosts in play as well.
Hope that makes sense!
pmc says:
Thanks for the recommendation of another host that makes unique-c hosting easier. Will test via the aff link :) All the best Hayden (and Han) and thanks for all the tips!
Sean says:
Just a heads up, my wife and I use Dreamhost. Luckily, she doesn’t use it for SEO (for her account) because this hapened:
Her account was moved to a new server, because reasons they didn’t tell me, but when they moved the domains to a new server EVERY SINGLE DOMAIN IN HER PORTFOLIO WAS PUT ONTO THE SAME EXACT IP ADDRESS. I have had dreamhost for a few years now, and I’m a bit worried they’re going to do this to me.
I asked if there was a way to avoid this, and they said “no.” That it is automatic and random.
Bummer.
Han Chang says:
Whoa, we were NOT aware of that, thanks for sharing and sorry to hear about your experience.
Unfortunately, risks exist in all businesses – if that were to happen to us, we’d create another Dreamhost account and slowly move the domains to that new account while migrating the existing sites to other shared hosts in the meanwhile. It’s just a cost of doing business, and the price point for Dreamhost makes it attractive enough to take this risk.
Marbles says:
Thanks Han and Hayden. Came over here after a H-Boogie’s last appearance on Spencer Haws’ podcast.
Keith Price says:
So, if I understand what you’re saying…
Unlike Becker, you believe it’s OK to have a PORTION of your PRB network on a single, multiple IP host such as DreamHost. Yes?
But, you’re also recommending you divide it up among a few hosts. But we don’t need to be paranoid and have only a single blog per host.
Do I have that right?
Han Chang says:
Yup that’s 100% correct. This is especially the case since we have multiple networks, so multiple sites per host is not a problem and is just more cost effective.
maxime sincerny says:
Hosting your PR sites on hosts like seohost could be why multiple domains from this particular host have less effect. If google find that a web host is dedicated to trick google it is easy for them to trigger a penalty on more than one link coming from this particular host. But, has said here if dreamhost have millions of websites that are legitimate like smartpassiveincome. They could not add an update that affect links from them, because they would affect too many legit websites.
Zed says:
I’d like to see the response to Sean’s reply on September 15th of the comments before I go and use the NOHATSEO10 coupon to make a purchase. Han – can you please tell me if you think this is of a concern?
Han Chang says:
I’ve replied to Sean’s comment above – it’s definitely a risk, I’m not sure of how much of a risk, but at the price point of Dreamhost we think it’s worthwhile enough to take the risk. We have enough other shared hosting accounts and can react quickly enough to migrate sites within a day so we don’t consider it a showstopper, but your situation may have different requirements. Best of luck!
Tim says:
I use Dreamhost and I had no idea they did this. Do you have to put your sites on different servers when you do the one-click installs? Also, how would I check what my site IP is?
Han Chang says:
No, the IP assignment seems to be somewhat arbitrary and occurs when you add a domain to your account. To check your IP, use the ping command or something like getip.com.
Tim says:
OK, thank you, Han!
Higgins says:
What if i want to create just a small network of say about 20 sites. Would you recommend to put them in 1 dreamhost shared account hoping to get them all on different c blocks? Or would you (since it’s gonna be 1 network, all linking out to the same sites) split them out over multiple host’s?
I’m asking cause in an earlier reply you mentioned : This is especially the case since we have multiple networks… in your reply on sept the 15th.
Han Chang says:
Personally I’d recommend 10 in Dreamhost and 10 on other host(s). It’s not too much of a cost or logistical issue to split them up and you’ll be able to host them faster, but try different things out and see how they work for you. Good luck!
Chris says:
Am I missing something here?
I got an account, put up 8 domains over a 2 week period – they all have the same IP.
I even took a couple down, waited 2 days and put them back up – same IP.
The only variation is that some have a slightly different D-class, which is pretty useless for a Private blog network.
Have you tried this technique lately? Perhaps they have changed their policies.
Good thing they have a 97 day money back guarantee. Now I just have to move the 8 domains back to their original hosts. Bummer!
Han Chang says:
Hey Chris, we’re still seeing fresh C block IPs although we check back in every week now since we have other hosts to use as well. Worst case you can get the refund if you’re not seeing any IP love, but it’s definitely still working for us, just takes a bit of patience. Good luck!
G says:
I’ve signed up for a free trial and have test 2 domains, added them within the same 24h – got 2 different C classes. So it works, at least sometimes :)
Han Chang says:
Yup, it definitely works, just takes patience. Glad you’re having a good experience!
Higgins says:
Hi Han
I’ve bought my first 2 domains in the auction that was held on Spencers site. I got them in my Namecheap account now and registerd an account with the nohatseo10 promo at dreamhost. Do i transfer the domains to dreamhost now or just change the dns setting in my namecheap account and leave the domains there?
Up on till this point ive only build niche sites, which are all on 1 host, the tranfering/dns thing and all that is new for me,….
Han Chang says:
We tend to leave the domain in the registrar and point them to our hosts, mostly because it’s easier.
Just keep your domains in Namecheap, set your DNS servers to Dreamhost (they have instructions on how to do this), and you should be good to go!
Rus says:
Great article and information! I was just lucky enough to switch to Dreamhost last week.
I’m newer to to the server classifications. How do I determine a C class?
Thanks!
Hayden says:
It’s the 3rd set of numbers.
x.x.THIS.x
JD says:
Hi,
This will be my 2nd try on SEO after Panda crushed my website.
I have a couple of questions Sir,
1. After starting off with 10 articles, do you only add new content when there is a need for a link, or it should be a constant process to add new articles?
2. Should I put the URL or keyword I am linking to on my homepage, ex: on the sidebar?
3. Is there a need to build back links to my PBN?
4. How often should I add new links from my PBN?
Thank you, I am eager to start after your podcast and reading all this helpful information on your blog.
Scott Davis says:
1) This post might be helpful: http://www.nohatseo.com/blog/covering-your-tracks-private-network-footprint-sweeping/
2) Not sure what you mean
3) No
4) Whenever you need to link build your money site.
Get into it!
Marbles says:
PBN Sites should get different IP’s- got it.
How do you set up multiple MONEY sites?
a) one hosting plan, with add on domains? (like if you get a NavyHost account, you can have 1 site, and then additional add on domains) – so 100 bucks for the year is good for a lot of sites.
b) several accounts with a hosting company. So 100 bucks per money site per year
c) accounts for you money sites with different hosting companies – so 100 bucks a year, and X # of passwords to remember?
Or something totally different?
Thanks in advance,
Marbles
Han Chang says:
We do Option C, but it really depends on a lot of factors, including how many sites you have, the quality of the host, etc.
Higgins says:
Hi Han,
I finally got my domains up and running on different ip’s in dreamhost, works like a charm btw, just gotta get Lucky now and then or else wait a few days and try again, just like you said. I have another somewhat related question for you now,
Do you use different e-mail adresses on the domains in your PBN or not? Do you think e-mail adresses can leave a footprint? I’m using wordpress on all my domains btw.
Thanks,
Han Chang says:
Yes, we mix up the emails with a unique address for each site, but it’s probably overboard. Although it’s not necessarily a footprint, sometimes a WordPress site will show author pages which might leave a footprint if the username(s) chosen are unique enough. That said, you should theoretically be safe if you use the same email, but different usernames.
Lawrence Michaels says:
Hey Han, interesting article. I setup a Dreamhost shared hosting account a month or so ago as you recommended. Since then I have setup three sites a few weeks apart from each other and so far they have all had the same C-blocks with only differences in the D-block. Maybe I’m just unlucky, or maybe this doesn’t work anymore.
Han Chang says:
We’ve been on an unlucky streak lately too – three in a row, with three days between each try. On the fourth we finally got a fresh C block though. We’re going to try different intervals to see if it makes a difference; maybe only wait one day, or something like that. It definitely still works, but has been taking longer than before – if you find any patterns though, please let us know!
Lawrence Michaels says:
Good to know. Have you tried changing the nameservers away from Dreamhost and then back again a few days later? Does that get you a new IP or are you stuck with the original?
Han Chang says:
No – does that actually work? We remove the domain and add it again a couple of days later.
Lawrence Michaels says:
I don’t know, that’s why I ask. lol
Han Chang says:
I don’t think that will work, because removing the nameservers won’t actually change the internal settings that Dreamhost has already decided upon.
Conrad says:
Hi Han,
Are you having any luck recently?
I got a fresh account with Dreamhost about 9 days ago.
I’ve hosted a site but for the second site, I cant get it to change the C Block. I’ve deleted the site about 20 times and changed the nameserv order around but still no luck :)
How is everyone else doing?
Han Chang says:
Hm, how long are you waiting in between each attempt? I’ve found that the best results come if I wait three days between tries. It has definitely been getting harder though, but that might be because we have quite a few unique c blocks already…
Conrad says:
I try it every night. I go to work, come home, recreate, yep.. CBlock IP still in same range, delete domain and re-create.
I’ve been consistent for the past nine days.
Maybe the recipe has to do with +2 days of inactivity?
Han Chang says:
That’s a good theory – please test it for everyone! I pretty much never try on consecutive days, and every time I have it hasn’t worked, so that might be part of it. Give waiting a shot please and let us know how it goes for you!
Conrad says:
I wasnt able to get a new CBLOCK during my time with Dream Host unfortunately. I tried for about 12 days initializing a hosting package, checking the ip with no change, destroying/remove and recreating/readd, repeat. The time interval between each attempt was about 12 hours. Some days i’d create and destroy about 7 times successively with no luck. Other days i’d give it 12 hours to breath. I’d also change the FTP username and once the order of the DNS but that has no effect. I ran to the end of my 12 day trial so cancelled my account. (Dreamhost has a 14 day trial period 100% refund guarantee wow!) I got my refund. Based on my experience Dreamhost is a great host with a slick backend/cpanel. Too bad I couldn’t get the CBLOCK to change. I suspect that 12 day’s isnt long enough to cycle, maybe i’ll have better luck next time?
Han Chang says:
We’ve been having luck with a much longer wait time in between tries. We average 3-5 days in between each attempt so maybe that will work better – 12 hours between each attempt is really short. Sorry it didn’t work out for you, but thanks for reporting back your experience!
Lia says:
How exactly can you se the Ip adress? Are these the IP adresses that you will get for changing them at namecheap? Because until yet I always become the same 3 ip adresses.
Scott Davis says:
This post might help http://www.nohatseo.com/blog/hosting-your-private-blog-network/
Lucas says:
Hi, do you think I can use free hosts for building PBN?
Hayden says:
Yes, but you get diminishing returns from each link from the same root domain to the same target site… so not usually worth it to register multiple blogs from the same freehost.
Shogo says:
Thanks for all the valuable information!
Do you guys have any opinion about the relation between IPs and countries? I live in Japan and am building Japanese sites targeting Japanese people. Google search results differ between when a word in searched from the US, and when the same word is searched from Japan.
Do you think having a site hosted on a foreign server would lower the rank of the site?
So far I have only used hosting services based in Japan but I think I will try building a PBN using dreamhost.
Han says:
Hi Shogo, I don’t think hosting a site on a foreign server lowers the rank. In fact, we have Australian, Italian, and French sites that are hosted on US servers which are ranking extremely well.
However, latency / page load time is a factor; if the server is slow to respond then that will negatively affect your rankings.
Hope that helps!
Ashish says:
I am currently using $1 shared hosting for hosting my PBN, its some work to manage but in the end its totally different IPs.and I host 1-3 domains of different PBN on each hosting so that is really cheap and I get different A,B,C class IP and different name servers on each site.
Pierre says:
Hi, I had a question regarding registering w/ a new hosting company.
How do you manage what name you put it under for less footprint? Should you use your real name, company name, etc?
Thanks for any help!
Han says:
I don’t think any anonymization is required for hosting; for domains you’ll need to change WHOIS records, but I’m not aware of any hosting company that reveals information about their customers publicly. Please let me know if I’m wrong though!
Canelo says:
Hi Han – I wanted to get your opinion on setting up a hosting account and using a Content Delivery Network like CloudFlare to mask server IP’s?
What are your thoughts on that?
Han says:
We’ve looked into it, and the result is inconclusive. The issue is that the IPs given by CloudFlare constantly change, which is good, but it also makes for a footprint since it’s very rare for small sites to use a CDN. Also, most CDNs use an HTTP header that says they serve as a proxy and actually reveal the original IP address so it’s not very useful. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Forwarded-For). As a result we currently don’t use any CDNs for our linking sites, but if you have a case study we’d be very interested in hearing about it either way!
Canelo says:
Thanks for the response, Han. I read on a blog the other day that using CloudFlare along with hosting on Media Temple (recently acquired by GoDaddy) was a good way, but you guys are the pros.
What would your recommendation be on starting off with 4-5 sites on a network? 1 different hosting company for each? I’d like to play it extra extra safe because these will be developed with quality.
Thanks again!
Han says:
If you can afford a different hosting company for each then yeah, that’s best. If not, then a reseller account is probably more cost-effective. What’s the URL for the Cloudflare + MediaTemple solution? I’d like to take a look to make sure, but from what I understand using a CDN is not a good option at this point, at least not for a lot of smaller private SEO sites. CDNs are best for large authority sites who get a ton of traffic from different geographic regions. Good luck!
Canelo says:
Hey Han – It looks to be like an affiliate site where this was written instead of an article so could I email it to you instead?
Han says:
Yeah definitely – [email protected]. Thanks!
Canelo says:
Hi Han – I just emailed it to you. Sorry for the delay.
Burnsie says:
Curious as to why you guys don’t recommend IXHosting and HostNine as much in the comments. It seems from the comments like dreamhost is really hit or miss with unique C blocks. From your review above, it seems like HostNine especially is real good in getting unique C blocks. Thoughts?
Han says:
More people had questions about Dreamhost; we definitely think Hostnine is the best option and use them extensively, but Dreamhost is cheaper for people that are just starting out.
Jorge Luis says:
Hi Han!
I’m just ready to start building my PBN and I signed up with both DreamHost and HostNine (both using your affiliate links obviously)
Now, a question about HostNine (reseller account):
When hosting a site, they ask me to create a “package” first, and for that I need to add two things:
– Max Disk Space
– Max Bandwidth
I know this is a support like kind of question, but I was just wondering based on YOUR experience what is the right number to use in those both values.
Sorry for the newbie question, but is the first time I use a reseller account =)
Thanks
Han says:
Just use the max recommended for both. You’ll virtually never hit that limit so it’s all good, but you’ll want to allocate your max to get your money’s worth anyways. Hope that helps!
Jorge Luis says:
Sure it does! Thank you Han.
By the way… Are you guys still gonna release the DreamHost script or that is not viable anymore?
Han says:
The Dreamhost script has been put on the back burner for now, we’ve got a ton of stuff going on and I haven’t had time to polish it… apologies about that. Hopefully I’ll have something ready by end of Q1 2014!
Bert says:
Hello,
I am trying to add 3 domains to my dreamhost account and Im still getting the same IP. I tried it overnight, in the morning, 3 days between etc. 2 websites I already have on 2 different c-class IPs but the other 3 are still getting the same c-class IP as the other 2. What can I do?
Thanks for all the interesting posts on your website, I really learn alot of them.
Scott Davis says:
Hi Bert this post might help: http://www.nohatseo.com/blog/hosting-your-private-blog-network/
Emmanuel says:
Hey Han, after the recent Google PR update, people have experienced their PBN sites being deindexed. Do you still recommend the hosts in this post and think it’s safe? (e.g) Hostnine, Dreamhost.. or do you think Google caught on somehow and deindexed some sites?
Hayden says:
The hosts in this post are still fine. Stay away from ideastack, indianets and the like
Greg Nunan says:
Emmanuel, I had only 1 site de-indexed from ~30 in my PBN that had been setup since the Feb pr update. I host mine across various hosting accounts. The site that got de-indexed was one of the only PBN sites that I recreated as something totally different to the original site. I suspect people setting up low-quality PBN sites that are unrelated to the former sites are the ones having most issues.
Angelo says:
Great info guys.
Had a question.
I just signed up (affiliate link of course) for hosting and was wondering when you say to set the “site” and allocate it to a specific zone, do you mean one website (www.site.com) or one “network” of sites (site1.com, site2.com, site3.com) for example?
Kinda confused on that.
Thanks!
Bryan says:
Thanks for the info. I set up a reseller account on hostnine and created 6 sites (subaccounts) that same day (1 per colocation). Six days later, I tried setting up one additional site (subaccount) on the Central US colocation and got the same exact C block. In fact, the D block in the quartet was only 8 numbers higher than the previous account at the same location 6 days earlier, so I deleted the account immediately.
Also, the server that was assigned at that colocation was different (one number higher) than the previous. This makes me think that they are distributing from one pool of IP addresses per colocation, even if a new server there is stood up. At this rate, it will take 190 days for them to assign a new C block from the same colocation.
Han and others, are you experiencing the same thing?
Jonathan says:
Han, regarding hostnine, can you actually choose the ip address? I assume you can choose the colocation zones, but would you be able to choose your ip address also for each zone or it’s just trial and error (add after a few days to get different ips – like it is for dreamhost?)
Thanks!
Jonathan says:
A further question Han, IXWebHosting says the 15 different IP addresses are not different c class. They suggested adding every few days to see if we get different c class IPs. Do you guys do this?
Joel says:
Hayden/han
I checked out ixwebhosting
It looks like i have to pay 1$ per ip/month apart from the hosting fee
John says:
If I want to “test the waters” with one expired domain.
Can I just host on something dirt cheap like fatcow.com 75cent per month hosting?
Are C block IPs needed if you only have 1 site per host?
My money site is on hostgator. So its still a completely different host.
Thanks
Hayden says:
Ya no problem as long as the host doesn’t go down or have weird indexing problems. I used a cheap host for awhile and would periodically have the domains get deindexed, I’d migrate them and within 2 weeks they’d be back. Frustrating.
hes21 says:
With Dreamhost I’ve managed 27 distinct IP’s on 14 subnets. Anyone do any better?
josh says:
does the name server make a difference? for example if i hosted 25 pr sites on a hostnine reseller account, they would have all different c-blocks from 5-6 datacenter around the globe. they would also all have the same name servers. any evidence that this matters?
Jack says:
How about cloakhosting.com? They seem to specialized in hosting sites for networks.
Hayden says:
I believe it’s a Dori Friend product? Haha use at your own risk…
Juan says:
Hi, just wondering if anyone had good luck recently to get a different class C at Dreamhost.
If you had, how long did you wait between domain registration?
Thanks
Phillip Dumont says:
I had my PBN running and it was working well.. But I created a domain and I assigned it to the same territory and linked it to my money site, but I only realized afterwards that it was being hosted on the same c block, and it had affected my rankings for a my main money page. So once I realized this I removed backlinks from both the sites that had the same c block. I still have other PBN sites pointing to the domain, but with different c blocks. Do you think I’ll be able to recover my lost rankings for the my index page now that I’ve removed the bad links? and do you think I could point the removed PBN sites back at my money site so long as I make sure they use different c blocks this time and put new content on them?
Thanks if anyone could help I would appreciate it.
SpiritFly says:
I bought an account at Hostnine. Thinking about getting at ixwebhosting or dreamhost now. I have a few questions about the two:
1. How long do you have to wait to get a new c-class at each?
2. How do you get a new ip at dreamhost? Is that script still active? I will sign up as an affiliate if yes :)
John Michaels says:
Great post!
I use Digital Ocean and recently spun up 3 servers, they all had unique class C IPs. The downside is you have to manage the servers separately. Not sure if it’s worth it, that’s a lot of maintenance.
Amazon’s elastic IP setup is also enticing, you could have different IPs for different VHosts, but I’m not sure how many unique class Cs you could get.
Do you know if geographical location is a factor worth considering when trying to isolate sites?
GregNunan says:
Thanks John. One of the benefits of Hostnine is that you can select from 6 different geographic locations, which is ideal. Certainly looks more natural for a site targeting global terms.
Dan says:
Hi, thanks for a great post. Quick question: are you using any of these hosts for your money sites as well?
GregNunan says:
Yes Dan, quite a few of them. Hostnine is one in particular.
Troy says:
thank you for this, you have a great site and well-written content about ALL of the elements of building a successful network (people and sites) – awesome, glad to have came across your info!
Craig says:
Hi Guys
With Host Nine it looks to me like all the name server dns records are the same ns1 speedy etc
Is this not leaving a foot print as all domains have the same name servers on the whois records or have i missed something here
Cheers
GregNunan says:
Always aim to spread your hosting with not more than 20% on the one host.
Timmy Deleu says:
I maxed out host9 already and now I purchased a dreamhost account. I’m having trouble getting unique ip’s. Does it still work?
GregNunan says:
We found the same and don’t use dreamhost now.
vkax says:
I bought an account at Hostnine and created 170+ sub-accounts with 60+ C block IPs
Rex says:
Just one account? Reseller account and how long it takes you make that archievement?
Mark Benny says:
Very nice place for SEOs and other peoples who want to get traffic on their website. From this website you get appropriate information about how to get traffic on your website with proper and effective methods.
Tom Dub says:
If I’m just starting out and only want 3 different PBN’s with unique C blocks, what the most affordable way in going about that? Getting a re-seller account seems to be a little steep for me.