IP diversity vs. CDN for hiding a PBN

[Golan]

Back in the day, few years ago, when i used to keep big networks, both for my own verticals and for the link sales, there was an unquestioning standard to keep every site in the network on an unique IP. You remember all the battles, SEO hostings good or bad, etc. So i used to rent huge amount of reseller packages on many hostings, i recall having almost 100 reseller packages at the peak.

Now a days, however, it seems all sites use CDN which kinda effectively mask the host IP, so the IP diversity is not needed anymore... Kinda.

What is your take on this? If you have your supporting network or PBN for link sales, is having CDN enough for you and would you keep all/ a chunk of your sites at the same host?

If you buy links from a vendor, how important for you is to have all of them on different IPs?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yeah, what a nightmare all of that was. SEO hosting was funny because, while you could get different IP addresses on different c-classes, it wasn't like Google couldn't figure out which were controlled by those hosts using the nameservers.

Anyways, a CDN, without a doubt one day WILL leak your IP address. If a CDN goes down long enough for Google to crawl one of your pages, then your IP address is now known.

I would not consider this a sufficient solution to the problem. The right way to do it would be to do it the old way, placing them on separate IP's on different hosts, making sure you're not leaking footprints in the start of authority (SoA) records and such.

I wouldn't expect it to last, though. There's a ton of sites out there that sell links that never get in trouble because they're real sites, you know, working with so many customers and posting other content with other outbound links, and they aren't giant networks all owned by the same people.

Once they're owned by the same person, things get real iffy and there's going to be impending doom if you're selling links to people rather than using it for yourself in a non-greedy fashion. The buyers will be greedy and will tier through your site with spam or public PBNs and all kinds of garbage.

If you want to get real paranoid, you can consider how you could end up using themes that use Google Fonts and they could nab your personal IP address from that and connect them to your sites, especially if the fonts load in the dashboard anywhere. I'm not saying they do this (I don't think they'd need to to figure it out), but they certainly could catch you this way or at least build confidence in their calculations about which sites are a part of the network.

 

[Darth]

Anyways, a CDN, without a doubt one day WILL leak your IP address. If a CDN goes down long enough for Google to crawl one of your pages, then your IP address is now known.

Is this because of over a failover that CDNs have - like if they know they are down and cant serve pages, they will send traffic direct to the origin?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Is this because of over a failover that CDNs have - like if they know they are down and cant serve pages, they will send traffic direct to the origin?

Yeah, sorry. This is what I was trying to say. Nothing has 100% uptime, and in the case of a CDN they'll just route the traffic direct to the server.

 

[thisishatred]

Tin foil hat on – check.

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So it's worth noting:

What size “network” are we talking here? If you think 10-20 PBNs coming from Cloudflare IPs is going to matter, that shit is like a drop in the water – especially these days.

Checking Cloudflare's usage statistics: https://trends.builtwith.com/cdn/Cloudflare

That's a positive trend if I've ever seen one.

In my opinion, Cloudflare or really any CDN hosting is a risk.

I mean PBNs themselves are risks - public ones at that.
Buying from a person who sells outreach/guest post links is a risk.
Using niche edits/placements is a risk.
Using SAPE links is a risk.
Even these days, using the wrong anchor internally and externally on any of those options is a risk (is Grindstone reading this?)

Most people in SEO have their own compass in terms of what's an acceptable risk - you'd have to find yours.

In my opinion, no "PBN" hosting is bulletproof. Even with how I did it, outlined below.

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The biggest thing that gets people is their greediness. Meaning a PBN is just that, a Private network that you control the link juice on. That being said, it should also be a 1:1 relationship on tier 1.

Is that practical from a Vendor's perspective who sells “Public” blog network posts? I'd wager to say no (especially as one) as the vendor would quite literally never become profitable. Are there certain ways to avoid risk as a seller? Absolutely.

Truth be told, any of those "check-lists" you'll find out there that are essentially copy/pasted regurgitated articles are a good start.

In my opinion: Public PBNs are best used on Tier 2 to something like Guest Posts or Niche Edits. Just to further bulletproof your money.

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Some of the better “hosts” for PBNs I've used are:

Bulkbuyhosting from Kevin Graham.

I've also used LaunchCDN (also K. Graham) but I'm not a huge fan.

The people from Bulk Buy Hosting actually give a shit too and will ban/suspend your host if you post stuff that's against the AUP. There is a definite mixture of real sites and other PBNs on the hosts but again, it's still better than most other "SEO Hosting" - EBN is a good example (I mean they also make it impossible to leave too).

Even checking CF nameservers, you'd be surprised the number of good sites you associate yourself with - as well as the nefarious ones.

In terms of better SEO style hosts I'm a big fan of Priority Prospects dedicated IPs. Even in this case you could start considering things like “IP Neighborhoods.”

No joke, you could literally go on forever with footprints to consider. It's borderline mental masturbation.

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The biggest disparity in the PBN world are margins. People want their cake and to eat it too. Only they don't want to pay for what it takes to make the cake – eggs, butter, sugar, milk, etc. all cost money. I know because I quite literally did it.

My “Premium” network is still hosted and live and uses Runcloud.io to manage various servers from Vultr, DO, Linode, Ramnode, Upcloud, etc.

[Christ even me using Nginx could be considered a footprint via response header info - which most of my networks above use]

I also make use of various popular shared hosts (most are dog shit).

My health network specifically uses Writers who are Physical Therapists, Dietitians, Pediatricians, and are reviewed by people in those industries; That info is exploited – for lack of a better term – to show Google it's not shit.

I mean actually reviewed to – it's sent to and corrected by Individuals who know their shit and allow me to paste their face, credentials, and work history on the site.

One of these sites just hit 2500 clicks a day.

I now make more from ads on this singular site from Mediavine than I did in the lifetime of me selling the premium network posts. I also shut down sales and have continued pushing content (nearly 250 posts now - and my clients are still there too) with no plans on stopping.

I think eventually the SEO world will catch up. Granted, it's like I said, even my networks above have "footprints."

To reiterate: SEO is borderline about taking calculated risks and if using a provider who uses CDNs is acceptable for you, take the risk; If not, don't.

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Just a quick side comment:

The biggest issue with PBNs is that People are conditioned to pay $5-20 per post. What I described above aren't Fiverr links or Walmart's Grab N' Go $1 DVD bin.

People want the above in a PBN but don't want to pay what it takes to run it. My content costs alone for a single post are more than a single post on my regular network.

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Back to the PBN Shadow Realm.

 

[Politico]

Got damn this thread triggered my ptsd flashbacks of building a couple of big pbns. I will never go back to building a pbn. In hindsight it was much more hassle than it was worth to do well and an inevitably temporary solution to a seemingly permanent problem - getting good links.