Getting links from spammy websites on the same IP

[suchde]

Hey,

I'm getting a ton ( 22k) of spammy links from another website which has the same IP address as mine. I've not received any notification from Webmasters but I think I'm getting massively penalized for the same.

1)Should I just go ahead and disavow these links?

2)Are there are other steps with regards to the technical aspects such as Hosting and Domain configurations I should look into to stop this and get ranked properly.

3)Do I need to submit a reconsideration request to Google after I've cleaned up this mess or will I need to wait till the next scrawl?

Thanks so much!

[AngelDigital]

Hi Suchde!

1. You should first contact the owner of the website that is linking to you, and ask that they remove the links.  If they refuse or don't respond promptly, go ahead and disavow the links. If the links are coming from a single site, you can disavow the whole lot in one go using domain: thewebsite.com in your disavow file.

2. Google penalises by domain and not IP, and so in theory (if you believe Matt Cutts), the fact that you're sharing the hosting with a spammy site shouldn't effect your rankings.  However, there's an additional factor here - the spammy site is linking to you, making it look like there is some association.  Although you're going to disavow those links and hopefully this should get rid of the issue, I can't be certain how Google will treat this. You could perhaps purchase a dedicated IP address for your site to mitigate the risk.

3. No need to submit a reconsideration request if you haven't received a manual penalty - reconsideration requests are just for sites with a manual penalty.

Hope that helps!

[gazzerman1]

Just a quick answer to Q3

"Do I need to submit a reconsideration request to Google after I've cleaned up this mess or will I need to wait till the next scrawl?"

You are now only able to submit a reconsideration request if you have a manual penalty. The option is no longer there in Webmaster Tools if you have no penalty.

[Dr-Pete]

Shared IPs are a bit tough. It used to be the case that, on rare occasions, Google might accidentally penalize a domain if another domain on that IP had a spammy history, carried a penalty, etc. These days, that seems to be very unlikely, probably because shared IPs are a lot more common. Once IPv4 started running out, many legitimate sites were sharing.

On the other hand, it is still more likely for links to be devalued or look suspicious if they come from the same IP, because that's often how low-quality link networks are built. In most cases, I suspect Google would simply devalue those links and not outright penalize the domains, but I'm not certain either way.

The tough part is that it's hard to separate whether you're being hit for the links, for them coming from a share IP, or for something entirely different. In a perfect world, I'm a fan of having a unique IP, but my gut says that that's probably not going to magically fix things here. Since they're all coming from one site, and if they're definitely spammy, I'd go the disavow route first (especially since you can disavow the entire domain). Give it a couple of weeks, and then you can try to submit for reconsideration. If/when you do, I'd specifically explain why you have a shared IP and that your site has no affiliation with this other site. As other said, reconsideration is generally for manual penalties, but it's unclear from your statements whether this penalty is manual or algorithmic. Disavow seems to be applicable to some cases of either situation, although Google has been a bit inconsistent on this topic.

At the same time, make sure nothing else is going on with your link profile. For links from just one domain to cause a serious penalty is very rare.

[suchde]

thank you for the responses

very helpful!!