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Domains, subdomains, and IP addresses: 1&1 vs HG

by richinca
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
After years of mediocre SEO rank performance (and particularly poor traffic as of late) , I decided to experiment by moving a few sites off of one of my 1and1 shared accounts to a hostgator business shared account based on positive reviews here. I've had no issues at 1and1 but SEO rank has always been tough although site performance is ok.

I chose the business shared account at HG because it included a dedicated ip address and I figured I'd get a performance boost. This is a test before moving to a reseller, VPS or dedicated account somewhere.

Both 1and1 and HG have "unlimited domains" in their descriptions.

I'm used to 1and1 and had a no trouble adding domains to the HG account.

At HG, it turns out you have to "addon" a domain, which effectively creates a subdomain of your main domain.

I had a heck of a time explaining this to tech support as they kept insisting that it is separate domain, but it is not.

For example: if I create two domains/sites
1. mainsite.c0m (main account site)
2. anothersite.c0m (another domain/site)

you have to create a subdomain when you create #2, so let's call it xxx.mainsite.c0m. They said this is the only way you can create it in cPanel. (Reseller accounts evidently give you a cpanel per domain so this is avoided?).

The problem is that both sites work fine, but if I type in the subdomain in a browser, I go to site 2. That means:

anothersite.c0m = xxx.mainsite.c0m = another site is a subdomain...

I don't think this is good for SEO, even with a dedicated IP. To me it means that Google is tying all the content together like one big site and most importantly, it sees two identical sites on the web (and they're linked).

Is this the correct way to look at this? Isn't this a big SEO issue?

My sites at 1and1 are separate and, as far as I can tell, are not subdomains of eachother.

Can anyone elaborate on the contribution to SEO that separate domains and separate IP addresses have? Or any other input on this issue.
#1and1 #addresses #domains #subdomains
  • Profile picture of the author richinca
    bump, anyone?
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  • Profile picture of the author webapex
    Subdomains are not as good as a distinct different top level domain.

    To review, a subdomain is a prefix ending with a period

    in myBlog.blogspot.com

    myBlog is a subdomain, they are always self evident, and have an obvious connection to the parent site. They are in practice a lot like a sub directory: someCompany.com/myBlog

    In terms of exact match domains, DiamondRing.com is a more valuable one of a kind than a subdomain DiamondRing.somecompany.com of which there may be any number on the web.


    People generally don't get dedicatd IPs just for search ranking, although if your shared host was a bad neighborhood including fraud sites, it's possible that ranking could be effected, outgoing mail from your site is less likely to get filtered by IP black listing, more often a dedicated IP is for technical purposes I believe they are required for HTTPS encrypted store pages.

    Now that you have 2 different IP addresses on the 2 hosts you can at least pick up a tiny SEO benifit by linking between sites, although there are other means for Google to recognize they have the same owner and don't 'deserve' link juice. Shared adsense accounts or whois owner info are 2.
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  • Profile picture of the author richinca
    what about the fact that

    anothersite.c0m = xxx.mainsite.c0m ==> which means they've made another site a subdomain of the main site...

    does that hurt from a SEO perspective? 2 domains (same IP) with same content?

    If this is the case then everyone with a shared account at HG has this issue
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  • Profile picture of the author Brian Alaway
    Originally Posted by richinca View Post

    To me it means that Google is tying all the content together like one big site and most importantly, it sees two identical sites on the web (and they're linked).
    Are you just assuming this to be the case?

    I would assume that with it's own domain name, and in your case it's own ip, and it's own unique content that Google would in no way see these two sites as identical. Could Google assume that they have the same owner, sure. But if you're not interlinking, so what? Considering how many other factors can affect ranking, this wouldn't be high on my list. The exception might be if your intent is to create linkwheels.
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    • Profile picture of the author richinca
      I'm not sure you're getting what is happening...

      On HG, I create a new domain called newdomain.c0m in my account where the main url is originaldomain.c0m. These are two unrelated sites and domains.

      but the way HG does this is by creating it as a subdomain of my original domain originaldomain.c0m, that is they create SUB.originaldomain.c0m which equals newdomain.c0m

      so if you go to your browser and type newdomain.c0m, you see my site... or
      if you go to your browser and type SUB.originaldomain.c0m, you see my site

      Doesn't that mean that Google sees two sites with the same content but different urls? (duplicate content issue)

      Worse than that, doesn't it mean that they see newdomain.c0m AS PART OF originaldomain.c0m because you can get to it through THIS.originaldomain.c0m?



      Originally Posted by Brian Alaway View Post

      Are you just assuming this to be the case?

      I would assume that with it's own domain name, and in your case it's own ip, and it's own unique content that Google would in no way see these two sites as identical. Could Google assume that they have the same owner, sure. But if you're not interlinking, so what? Considering how many other factors can affect ranking, this wouldn't be high on my list. The exception might be if your intent is to create linkwheels.
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  • Profile picture of the author GordoInCA
    Hey Guys,

    I'm having the same problem. Anyone have any additional insight into this? I'm a little concerned I'm hurting my SEO efforts because of HostGator's method of adding all new domains as sub-domains of your original site.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nomadic
      I have also recently moved to HostGator after reading the recommendations on WF. Even with all that reading, I didn't know about the subdomain requirement until after I signed up. My original host was in Switzerland, been with him for a long time but decided that being hosted in the US for my US centric sites would probably be a good idea.

      Anyway all my sites work fine and they look like they are not subdomains in the browser. HG assures everyone at great length that they don't look like subdomains from the search engine perspective either. Ok, but I'm still not totally convinced.

      Anybody really know the deal with this subdomain thingy? Does it only effect you if you're doing a link wheel or are there other problems with that whole scheme? Seems fishy to me.

      To the OP, hostgator answers these kinds of questions quite quickly on their own help boards. They can help you get that problem fixed, I'll wager.
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  • Profile picture of the author oogyboogawa
    I would think that as long as Google never crawls the SUB.originaldomain.com there would be no problem and they wouldn't realize that it was a subdomain. I wouldn't think Google would ever have a reason to find that subdomain unless you pointed a link at it.


    However, I'm not going to pretend I know all the intricacies of how that sort of setup works.
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    • Profile picture of the author aquanet
      I don't think this would be a problem. This scenario is not unique to HostGator. Any web hosting companies that use cPanel would have the same situation, and LOTS of companies use cPanel. cPanel is almost a standard. So if this causes a problem, most websites would have the same issue.

      Most people use shared hosting like you. Google treats your 2 domains pretty much like any 2 domains owned by 2 different people within the same shared hosting server, which is usually shared by thousands of domains.

      WhoIs lookup might link your 2 domains together, but not always. If 2 people both use domain privacy on their domains, their WhoIs lookups could look the same. Plus, one person can technically use different contact info on different domains that one owns. So WhoIs lookup is not really a good measure to find websites owned by the same person.

      As long as you don't point a link to your xxx.mainsite.c0m, it shouldn't be exposed. Even if it leaks out somehow, Google would crawl your anothersite.c0m and your xxx.mainsite.c0m separately and treat them as 2 websites with duplicate content. (That wouldn't be good for you, of course.)

      This is a quirk that always bugs me about cPanel. Companies that don't use cPanel can easily let you add domains without adding subdomains. I don't know why cPanel insists on creating silly confusing redundant subdomains. I have been hoping that they would change that in their future upgrades.
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