There may be a new issue approaching the seo world. Imagine having to update your web work from one IP address, and query search engines from another...? Well, it just may be a good time to start thinking about it.

I heard a few people hinting around about this over at webproworld and I was so blown away the more I thought about it. The real scary part is - it makes perfect sense.

Why would someone query Google more than 10 times per hour?
The only logical reason would be that they are testing the serps.

So what if the Google toolbar is recording use and identifying ip addresses as possible seo's.
Well, they are... Atleast I think they are. Why shouldn't they?

Have you read the Google toolbarnterms and conditions lately? Remove the toolbar and reinstall it. You'll find that the terms and conditions are updated often as they implement new algo's. I suspect the pagerank indicator is their greatest tool in researching the habits of their users. They state clearly that the pagerank feature in the toolbar holds more privacy policy liabilities then any other feature on the toolbar. The terms and conditions basically state that by using the pagerank feature of the toolbar, Google will collect more information on the user than without that feature enabled. It also states that you agree to let Google use the information they collect from users to improve the quality of their search results.

So the next question is:

Can Google identify the webmaster of a particular web server and compare it to excessive ip queries?

In other words: If a webmaster is on IP address: 12.345.67.890, and his website files are stored on IP address: 01.23.45.67, is there a way for search engines to know those two IP's are working together?

Well, I've been thinking of how they might be able to do this...
Here are a couple ways I think it may be possible, you tell me what YOU think.

1 - The new Whois Crawler identifies the IP address of the domain registerer and feeds that information to Google. Google then comparares that IP address to excessive query IP's. If it finds a match, your flagged.

2 - Google counts the number of exact queries run from the same IP address per day and counts the number of visits to a website that reflects those keywords. In other words, If you run you target search term every day to check your ranking and your on your site everyday, then those searches and website belong to the same user... (This one is a little far fetched, but possible.)

The only other way I think it may be possible would require server data sharing. Could a search engine somehow find out what IP address ftp's into a site to upload files? Can they somehow find a way in to analize statistics? I really don't think so. I know that some webhosts automatically setup a stats.html page that can or cannot be password protected. Most novices do not realize or know how to password protect them, but this type of campaign wouldn't be targeting novices. What do you think about this new concept?

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I think other people could spoof your IP or whatever. I think it is not a big deal.

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What about all those tesing software and those making software that uses the google API?? Especially if they are hosting a bit of software that uses Google. What about web mining software? I don't think they can realistically do this, also its always possible to hide an IP address or mask it.

Google would have to have a team of 100 people jsut to research this information every day. Not just SEO's but what about those with lot's of PPC ads many of them check to see how their add is ranking everyday. Plus businesses who run off 1 or 2 IP's in a network if I have 40 people and all the IP's are from 1 t1 line then it might get hit 100-200 times per day.

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I do agree however that Google is targeting SEO's to make more use of the PPC Ads. By not doing timely updates and making continual changes to the algo they keep SEO's at bay hoping they can come out on top. It is hard explaining to customers that Google is just not updating and they have to wait and wait.

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i think you're a little too paranoid...

Chris, tools are cool. We encourage the tactful promotion of good ones. PM me if I may be of any assistance.

hey, with computers come the systems for total control... this just makes sense. are they doing it now? who knows... but it makes sense to me.

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This is just one of those times I'm appreciative of having a dynamic IP address.

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I believe that Yahoo has a kind of "Throttle" where they restrict your bandwidth based on some sort of algorithm.

Besides, most of the good Page Rank Tools out there use the Google API and not the web interface.

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