What is considered "search engine friendly hosting" and why? I have heard a few people mention this. Does it really matter? What are you to look for as far as seo friendly hosting, and what should we avoid?

This refers to hosts offering different Class C IP’s and/or different NameServers.

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Mobile Homes For Sale in Arizona ~ Sales Training ~ Mobile Homes For Sale

So that's it? I thought I heard someone talking about full urchins or something like that. I don't even know what urchins are LOL....

More than likely he/she was referring to "Urchin" software.

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...can you explain more on this one. What's the benefit of the host offering different class c ips? I could see some benefit if you have more than one site and plan to link them together...but we know...in the eyes of google that a dedicated ip is no different than a virtual/shared ip. I think domain registration information is more important than your ip address.

How do the name servers help?

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Exactly.

A disadvantage I see with shared IP addresses is not knowing who you are sharing with.

Same with NameServers.

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Is there a way to see who is sharing an I.P. address with your site when you are on a shared server?

Yes.

Got to http://www.whois.sc/:
>>lookup the domain name >>Find the IP address >>Reverse IP Lookup

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It was my understanding that google does not penalize sites based on ip. The only issues I've had with shared ips is the mail server. Some spammer blasts out a billion messages and then gets the whole server on the blacklist....then when I try to send an email to someone whos server is using the blacklist I get bounced

I would think that a search engine friendly host would do the following:
1. Not over host/load thier servers with too many sites...bots may leave the server if it doesn't resopnd quickly.
2. Make sure the routers and gateway don't prohibit bots from crawling freely.
3. Configure thier NAT so that your domain name resolves to the correct site.
4. Provide you with indepth stats and a raw log so you can analyze the results of your SEO efforts.

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Here's an example of how Google may use IP addresses:

Information retrieval based on historical data.
[0100] In one implementation, a list of known-bad contact information, name servers, and/or IP addresses may be identified, stored, and used in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

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