Google Pagerank and "Class-C Addresses"

[Sebastian Wiesinger]

Hello Nanog,

I'm looking into a weird request which more and more customers have.
They want "different Class C addresses", by which they mean IPs in
different /24 subnets.

The apparent reason for this is that Google will rank links from
different /24 higher then links from the same /24. So it's a SEO
thingy.

I googled a bit and found pages after pages of FUD and such great
things as the "Class C Checker":  "This free Class C Checker tool
allows you to check if some sites are hosted on the same Class C IP
Range."

My question is: Is there any proof that Google does differentiate
between /24s, or even better is there any proof that this isn't the
case? I will not give a customer space from different address blocks
just because he read it in a SEO magazine.

Perhaps someone from Google itself can answer this question?

Also how do you handle such requests? I expect I'm not the only one
who gets them.

Regards,

Sebastian

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