Do Search Engines Note Servers?

[trace-uk 0]

I was wondering, do search engines compare all the websites on a server to see if they have similar content? It just seems odd that I have 2 sites on the same server with similar (not duplicate) content and one is doing well and the other is doing bad. They are not linked.

[Csshih 0]

Google searches are based on the amount of visits to the sites and relevance. It does not search by servers. If you had 2 websites with similar content and you submitted it to google, People who searched, probably saw either one of the sites first, and clicked on it. This sent information to google that that site was more popular, and the site moved up the list. More people would click on the site because It is higher up the list and not click on the other site. Then the website would move even higher up the list until it was almost somewhere on the first page. The other site, would be closer to the bottom of your search results bacuse no one visits it.

[trace-uk 0]

I'm not to sure about that, except for adwords PPC. What I'm suggesting that to confirm duplicate content google will see if there are any other websites like it on the same server in its results. as two similar websites being on the same server would suggest they are owned by the same person.

[Florisjuh 0]

It's very hard to judge if a website is the same, I mean, a website with two same type of game company's hosting their website might look the same, but they are probably very different.. (Altrough a game company doesn't need to be ranked very high on Google because the community playing the game will visit the website)

[trace-uk 0]

yeah, but I think the Ses are looking at the similarity of the age content between the two stes and if they are on the smae server and page content similarty is high then i think they sandbox you?

[Paul 0]

Actually, Google does take note of servers.

In terms of links, if you host two sites on a server and place a link on each site to the other, these links aren't as important as links from an external server/IP.

Here's an interesting read on this topic from SeoChat:

http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimizats-ip-46176.html

Edited June 2, 2006 by Paul (see edit history)

[anwiii 17]

I was wondering, do search engines compare all the websites on a server to see if they have similar content?
It just seems odd that I have 2 sites on the same server with similar (not duplicate) content and one is doing well and the other is doing bad. They are not linked.

i don't think they look for server information, but rather domain and sub domains to compare content....they also compare links on different sites to see where the final destination is wthin the links. it's easy to track links now. it's easier though to track links within the same domain/sub domain and within directories