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My website now has 2 IP address. My current site is http://review4buyer.com which was registered in GoDaddy.

I set the names server to Dreamhost, but in the DNS Zone manager of Dreamhost I point the domain to another server. Now when I check the IP of that site using many online tools, they all showed both Dreamhost and the other server.

Is any SEO problem with this setup?

Update: Since the site is down, i have to switch back to original method by using namesever of a cPanel hosting provider then change the A record in their advanced DNS zone editor. Now i see it resolves to only the IP address of my private server.

Previously, it was intermittently down, sometime it resolves to Dreamhost, sometime to my private server, causing intermittent down time.

However, i still would like to hear opinions about frequent resolving to different IP address. Would it cause problems to SEO if both IPs can sever the correct content?

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  • I did a dig with trace and only found one IP address (198.205.118.57) for your domain name.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 16:42
  • Yes, i have just updated the question. It was embarrassing for me because the site is down whenever it resolve to dreamhost
    – aye
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 16:44
  • If you were intermittently down, then you were in a round-robin DNS scenario which is a technique used for load-balancing servers (old-school). This is still a common method. If the various IP addresses are not black-listed and are in good neighborhoods, there is no SEO issue. However, there is no advantage to having more than one IP address with just one server.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 16:48
  • So, is there a way to prevent that problem? I need to go to the IP of the end server, not the dreamhost one. And is load-balancing mechanism you mentioned bad for SEO?
    – aye
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 16:50
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    I suspect that something is not set-up right. I always suggest using the registrar DNS to set your A, CNAME, MX records. Most people get confused when setting NS records in the registrar DNS and trying to use cPanel to set the A, CNAME, MX records locally. Sometimes this will not work. As well, I highly recommend not opening up your server to DNS queries. It is a serious security risk.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 16:54

1 Answer 1

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This is a good question and I'm glad to hear you're online again, but as requested i'll dig into this scenario a bit deeper.

OK firstly, like many elements online you need to keep the latency of requests as low as possible, this includes dns lookups.

By relaying your dns information in a long chain using many providers you will increase the points of failure, add increased latency / complexity to your domains dns configuration.

You should normally only have two steps in your dns information

New visitor requests a lookup for mydomain.com, the server uses the nameservers to find the place where it can locate the dns information.

normally something like ns1.myexamplehost.com and ns2.myexamplehost.com

These name servers hold information like your sites A records which tell the requesting client which ip address your site resides on.

Again, continuing this chain by adding records that point to other servers which hold different records, continuing the flow of information will work but it's something that shouldn't be done.

Using the domain providers dns and adding records where required is a good idea, but if you're using cpanel using your hosts name servers will do everything automatically for you, such as you add a subdomain dev.mydomain.com - cPanel will create the required dns entries for you automatically, whereas using your domain providers dns requires you to login and add the records manually. Both are great examples of how to configure your name servers.

Now that we understand why your current setup isn't such a great idea back to the multi ip question.

There is no issue with using many ip addresses for your website, I run many dual load balanced websites that show the two ip addresses of the load balancers, which in turn have five web servers under each load balancer. This assumes that the ip addresses have a neutral or good reputation and have not been blacklisted. You can check with a quick Google search for "ip blacklist checker".

The only time I've seen dns cause seo issues was when it was mis-configured and didn't allow google to crawl as it couldn't be resolved.

Your dns server is as important as your web server, if your dns service is offline or is mis-configured then it's only a matter of time before your website will stop resolving and visitors will be unable to find you, if google is unable to visit your site this may affect your Google rank as your new content won't be indexed. However, even the large players run into issues, I remember godaddy's dns getting attacked last year bringing thousands of sites down for hours maybe even days.

As a side note, two or more ip's being configured in your dns is fine, but you need to make sure you redirect the requests to your domain name, you don't want content being shown/served when you visit your ip addresses directly becasuse it will look like duplicate content to Google and this may hurt your seo efforts.

This is normally solved with a simple entry to your htaccess file. Check out: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19989580/301-redirect-for-ip-address-with-standard-wordpress-htaccess-file

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  • Hi William. Thanks for your very thorough answer. I'm much more clear now, especially about SEO effects :)
    – aye
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 13:04
  • You're most welcome, I hope it helps you and others. Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 13:08

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