Now that I put the dreaded C-word in the title mine won’t be the only office in the nation calling it Class-Cunt ips. Watch, you’ll catch yourself doing it and frankly you deserve it. :) To make the transition into a technopotty mouth easier with a handy mnemonic: A Big Cunt Drowns Easier (E is incase we ever make that switch the government keeps rambling on about).

I probably get more questions about my distribution of IPs than any other type. Frankly I can answer it in one word, evenly. But once again hitting up our Open Questions post here’s a question that I think best illustrates the topic.

This one is from Quinton Figueroa

1. For each domain do you split your subdomains up in multiple C Class IPs or do they all stay on 1? Does it depend?

2. For each domain do you link from your subdomains to other subdomains or do you keep each one as its own stand alone “site”?

3. Do you set up in the 100’s of subdomains or in the 1,000’s of subdomains (or maybe more) per domain?

Appreciate the help man, you kick ass!

Google doesn’t penalize a site because of the other sites on the same IP or class. I say this with confidence because even though Matt Cutts publicly said it in one of his video dialogs I still researched it myself to make damn sure (you can thank me later ionhosting). I also haven’t seen any evidence that the other search engines are any different. So I speak the same answer whether I’m talking about one site having a different IP than another or a subdomain having a different IP than the main domain. It’s all under the same point of reference, but to address the question directly what’s the one primary reason why a subdomain has a different IP than a main domain? Thats right, it’s on a different server.

Side Track
BTW when people say a statement like, “I haven’t seen any evidence” it usually means they haven’t LOOKED at any evidence. For future reference, give statements like that about as much authority as a one legged security officer. Do your own research.

Back On Track
If there is no penalty for sites being on the IP and there is no explicit reward for being on separate IPs than all thats left is two small benefits of 1. If your sites are black hat it makes it harder to track all them down. 2. The links appear to be more natural between two sites if they are on separate IPs (whether or not this is an actual benefit or not remains to be seen). So whole IP diversification business boils down to costs vs financial reward. So while in the past I’ve been very cautious of my own IP dispersement, which was only in part because during that period I was able to acquire IPs very cost efficiently, since I have lessened my efforts. The rewards vs the costs just aren’t there enough to invest any worry into the matter. So my answer is simply “evenly.” Use what you got. If you get a server and it gives you 10 free ips. Use them all and just distribute your sites amongst them. You won’t regret it and at the same time you wouldn’t see any explicit benefits from dumping a bunch of extra money every month into more ips. The money is obviously better spent on things thats make more revenue such as domains and servers. Even if you had unlimited IPs how would you end up distributing them? Evenly…

To be perfectly clear, even though I take IP distribution with a grain of salt it doesn’t mean I take nameserver distribution lightly and the same applies to domain registration info. In fact I’d say the one exception to the IP carefree rule is if you happen to write a blog teaching people how to bend over Google like a Japanese whore. :) I mention it, because I know some of you do. In which case be very careful about what sites you allow others to see. Throwing a few decoys out also doesn’t hurt because “do no evil” policies don’t apply to profit risks. Paranoia? For a year and a half yes, after Oct 21st of this year. No. You may not get it, but someone somewhere just shit their pants. So feel free to giggle anyways.

As for questions 2 and 3 if you would of asked me a year ago I would of had a completely different response. Yet the basic principle still remains. I talked about this topic to great depth in my SEO Empire Part 1 post. Reread the section where I talk about the One Way Street Theory. The decision on how many subdomains as well as whether or not they should be orphan subdomains or innerlinked is a decision I make by asking whether or not those subdomains would be of benefit to the main domain. If they are of a benefit to it than i establish a relationship between the two (ie a link either one way or exchanged). If they aren’t than I keep the subdomains orphan. BTW the term Orphan subdomain or Orphan Subpage was a term coined by an obnoxious troll here. I kinda liked it so I kept it. It means the subdomain has no relationship with the main domain or any other pages or subdomains of the site. Watch out for innerlinking between subdomains though. Think in terms of sites who do it effectively and sites that don’t. If your innerlinking in a way that mimics About.com or similar than great. If your innerlinking in a way that say Blog Solution or something would, for the sake of link building to each subdomain, I’d advise against it for footprint reasons and for god sakes if you’re hosting a blackhat generated site on a white hat domain don’t even consider it!

Do’s and Don’ts of Subdomains.
Do create subdomains for the purpose of exploiting an established domains domain authority. - I’ve talked a lot about software related sites. I think they’re a great and easy way to build domain authority. Anything related can be thrown into a subdomain. I got a couple general sites that have great domain authority and anything i throw up on it does well in the SERPS almost instantly. I make sure to not over do it and it works out very well for me.

Don’t create subdomains to save on domain costs. - It’s less than ten dollars a year for fuck sake. Don’t risk trashing a $20/day site and its authority that it took you a year or two to establish to save $10/year.