Moz reporting for C-Blocking

[rpaiva]

Hey Mozers,

I see Moz has a reporting tool for C-blocking and for november I had 330.  Does this mean 330 Ip addresses came from the same location in the month of november?

[Ray-pp]

Here is an example of what a C Block is:

• 192.168.006.001
• AAA.BBB.CCC.001-254

So, the .006 in the above example is the C-block. Generally, IP addresses that have the same C-block are hosted by the same website hosting. For example, Hostgator, being a widely popular and cheap host provider, hosts a large number of websites in the same C-block.

It's recommended to diversify a link portfolio and you want to increase the locations of where are links are coming from too. They may discount links coming from the same location, although they are not coming from the same website.

Where was the exact location for the C-block metrics you're seeing in Moz?

[rpaiva]

Thanks for the quick response.  I have a pretty good as to how c-blocking works and what It is thanks for explaining though I do appreciate the help

My question was more so for the Moz tool.  It states that for the month of November I had 330 and I'm trying to get a better understanding as to what that 330 is referring to.  Would this mean My website had 330 websites that had similar c-blocks?

[Ray-pp]

Ok, great - I didn't want to answer the question directly without looking at the report itself.

Can you let me know where in Moz you saw the C-block report? I'll check it out and report back.

[rpaiva]

Sure,

you could find an example in your dashboard under the following path

Links > competitive metrics > History

[Ray-pp]

I believe that number is representing the number of different C-blocks linking to your domain. Not the total amount of links from those C-blocks.

So, it would mean that there were 330 'different' IP addresses. Different meaning that the C-block was different, the whole IP address differentiation could be a very different number.

[rpaiva]

ahh Thanks!.  What is considered as to many?  330 c-blocks seem like a lot of ip addresses from the same location

[Ray-pp]

I doubt there is a hard number of links per C-block to be considered 'too many.' It would depend on a lot of factors.

If your link portfolio is flooded with the same C-block then much of those links would be heavily discounted. A high number of links from the same C-block could indicate some sort of blackhat technique used on a specific web host, but not necessarily.

You want more linking C-blocks to your site and less links coming from the same C-block, in general.

[rpaiva]

I was following you until you said. "You want more linking C-blocks to your site and less links coming from the same C-block, in general."  that statement threw me off.  Could you explain?

[Ray-pp]

No problem,

Let's say we have 1000 domains linking to our website and...

• 800 links are coming from c-block A
• 150 links are coming from c-block B
• The remaining 150 links are all coming from unique c-blocks

Before looking at the linking c-blocks, we might think our effort of receiving 1k links is going well. However, after looking at the c-block analysis, we see that a startling 800 are coming from one c-block. It's very probable that many of those links' authority are being discounted because they are coming from the same 'source.' So, the 1k figure isn't telling an accurate story because many of the links acquired aren't really improving our SEO.

We should try and identify why so many came from 1 c-block and gain links in other areas. Maybe we targeted a location and specific niche which was part of a larger site network all hosted on the same C-block. We need to adjust our strategy to try and diversify out to more c-blocks, i.e. diversifying our portfolio of links coming in to our website.

Does that help?

http://moz.com/blog/ipv6-cblocks-and-seo This Moz post goes into some deep examples too.

[rpaiva]

Ahh I understand the point your trying to make and I completely agree thanks for that.

So the 330 c-blocks that i'm seeing in my report isnt necessarily telling me that I have 330 urls from the same c-block is it?

[Ray-pp]

Correct, it is not telling you that you have 330 URLs from the same C-block.

[rpaiva]

so what does the 330 mean then exactly? an average of 330 similar c-blocks ?

is it an addition of total potential c-blocks

100 c-blocks from A

100 c-blocks from B

100 c-blocks from C

[Ray-pp]

In the Moz report it means 330 unique c-blocks that link to your website.

It sort of an indicator of the diversity of your website's link portfolio.

[jameskais]

Ray did a great job explaining what and how linking c-blocks do to affect your domain authority. Generally speaking it is better to have unique linking c-blocks as it means a variety of sources are linking to your domain. If all come from the same c-block it may look spammy or fake according to search engines.