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Hosting Many Websites on One Server / Different IPs - Can Google tell?
So I recently got a OVH server with 256 IPs. I have many websites spread over many different servers. I'm thinking of migrating all those websites to my OVH server, each using its own IP (and SSL if available).
My problem is, some of those sites are linking to each other, and it's known that it can hurt your SEO and google can punish the rank of the websites that are on the same server if they are found to be linking to each other.
From a technical point of view, how much info can someone know. The IPs are not in the same range, they quite vary well (192.xxx.xxx.xxx, 198.xxx.xxx.xxx, etc...). But my question is can someone tell they are on the same physical server? Maybe from the server's hostname?
Comments
SEOs made up the c class myth (aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd) but in reality just don't do any spammy links and you will be fine.
Holy Shit,
You can host all of those on same IPs 
There is no effect of these fucking IPs
@wych It hasn't been proven whether it's true or not, everyone seems to have a different opinion on the matter. I just wanna know if someone can tell whether those websites are on the same physical server.
Some of my sites have a good rank, and I don't wanna risk losing it.
99% of SEO is bullshit.
My own personal experience proves that its BS to me, again provided you aren't doing some dodgy linking/spam.
Most of the theory is right, however most SEO's chat crap or don't understand the context advice is in thus where all the bullshit comes from.
SEO to me is just a fancy word for add properly written articles to your website and update them every now and again..
We have a few client whinge because there website isn't #1 but there Facebook page that was made a year earlier is...
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/
99% of that what is publicly available is bullshit. That's what I can tell you for sure.
Clients that self-educated themselves before hiring help always need a good talk before they understand what kind of damage they did to their own business.
Create value for your audience, make sure you give that audience exactly what they were looking for and communicate exactly what you want your visitors to do.,
Of course a good internet marketing agency will make this process a lot easier and efficient for you, but if you can't afford it. Just follow those rules and you'll be fine.
Google's own Matt Cutts has said it doesn't matter. Google it and read his blog post for yourself.
I think the bigger problem for you is hosting all those sites in france. Geographical location of hosting matters:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
I don't think google can tell.
You can specifiy in Google Webmasters Tools what you want as your geograpical location. IP doesn't matter. Google knows some people just host with a big shared hosting company and don't want those people to have a disadvantage since some of them create the best content.
TLD matters though. If you have a .nl domain for example. You will have a slight advantage over the one with the .com domain, for the dutch google result pages of course. Still, if you're content is 100% dutch and you're doing all the right things. You will still win. In the end the page gets judged the most and not the root domain.
To answer your ultimate question: Google can tell, but they don't care.
If it's not an obvious link network, you'll be fine. If it is, Google will manually find you and penalize you for many years on the whole network. You can benefit from different IPs if you're using bots that auto-create websites with content and link them to each other layer after layer to ultimately link them to the money site. The benefit of the separate IPs will be to reduce 'footprint'. But if you're working with these blackhat tactics you might as well quit since it's easier these days to just do it white hat.
Indeed you can specify in webmaster tools. The details are in the link I gave above. However, if you have lots of sites adding them to webmaster tools is difficult. It also creates an association between all the various sites and, if you are creating a link wheel like the OP is, you may not want that.
Another reason why hosting location matters is page load speed. If your target audience is in the US, hosting in Europe will mean that pages will load a few hundred ms slower. Probably not something your human audience will notice but page load speed is a factor in search engine rankings too now.
The score isn't based on the latency of the server. ( well, 100ms doesn't hurt anything - they have some tolerancy)
They judge your page on how it's build.
I'm not sure if this is still the case, but I remember Facebook's servers all being hosted in the USA a couple of years a go.
Although it doesn't matter that you hosted in the USA and are marketing in The Netherlands. I still host as close as I can to the location of my audience. For that lower latency as you described.
I still advise against link wheels.