There have been many debates over shared hosting, does it hurt your SEO?
Thanks to John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, we’ve the answer.
He says that a website’s SEO performance is not affected by shared hosting or any bad sites present on a shared hosting service.
The study Mueller was responding to states that, when it comes to Google SEO scores, shared hosting servers have “a detrimental effect on the organic performance and rankings of the websites.”
But posting on Twitter, Mueller argued that the methodology of the research in question is fundamentally flawed.
He said that he doesn’t know about any Google algorithms that take into account whether a site exists on shared hosting or its own while ranking a page. Mueller supported his reasoning with the example of Blogger.
Blogger is a hosting service where all the sites have the same infrastructure. But still some sites rank well while some don’t.
Also Read: How To Filter Internal Traffic in Google Analytics
Table Of Contents
Cheaper shared hosting services usually have low-quality websites on them
The study was set up to test whether the theory that says Google’s ranking algorithms might be biased to cheaper hosting services. To test this, 20 websites were created with meaningless keywords.
Half of the sites were set up on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the other half was on cheap shared hosting platforms.
After 3 months of tracking these sites, Reboot Online Team found that “websites hosted on a shared IP address ranked less strongly than those hosted on a dedicated one.”
John says that he loves it “when folks experiment like this”, he also suggests that this data isn’t particularly useful.
He pointed out that there is an issue with using an irrelevant keyword to analyze Google’s algorithm.
For Google to function properly, the platform needs to understand the context and meaning of a search term. For obvious reasons, that can’t happen if a keyword is picked specifically because it’s not used by real people.
Also Read: How Many WordPress Plugins Should You Use?
Are linking algorithms updated in the core updates by Google?
There was a Webmaster Central Hangout recently in which Mueller discussed how long it takes for links to affect search engine rankings.
Core algorithm updates are shared by Google every 2-3 months. They are aimed at providing better and more accurate results to searches made by users.
In the hangout, a person asked whether the linking algorithm is updated as well in the core algorithm updates. The exact question was:
“I was wondering about when these big announced core updates happen, are there some parts of the linking algorithm updated as well?”
To which Mueller answered…
Core algorithms have components. It is not a single algorithm, but a mix of several other algorithms that work cohesively. He pointed out that Google doesn’t always make changes to the link algorithms in a core update.
It happens sometimes, but not always.
How long does it take for links to affect search engine rankings?
We’ve not had a straight-forward answer to this in a very long time.
Some SEO experts say that it can take a few weeks, while some say it can take months.
However, Mueller’s answers suggest otherwise. According to him, Google is continually processing links.
He explained:
“So, it’s not that we have to wait for a specific time frame to see the new effect of the links. But rather when we see links on the web, we can take them into account essentially immediately.”
Mueller’s confirmation that links can have an immediate effect on search rankings may seem surprising. However, some experts believe that there’s more to the explanation.
An article from Search Engine Land reads:
“That may be that it takes weeks or months to see an effect on rankings because it may take more than just one or five or ten links to see an effect in rankings.”
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