I can't find the post, but I remember reading here that....

I can't find the post, but I remember reading here that google doesn't do an IP look up it remembers the IP of the domain and just uses that so if you move hosts you have to leave a page up and do a 301 moved error document...

I was wondering if this is the case how does google deal with name based hosting, where all the URL's are on one IP address.. this is the norm for may hosts, it seems very rare for a domain to be on an exclusive IP in these times of IP paranoia (we're going to run out of IP's soon - lets start limiting them to such a degree that everything is on one IP - Panic!!!)

Just wondering...

I mean I have several URL's on a box and they are all on one IP - does this mean that google doesn't go to the domains that are not the default domain?

Hope you can help here..

:::I mean I have several URL's on a box and they are all on one IP - does this mean that google doesn't go to the domains that are not the default domain?

Oh yes, they do go to all the domains that you got on the same IP address. I got 23 domains on my server, all have the same IP address and you bet they are looking at my sites. If you find http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html in your log, than that means Google is looking at your sites. When I moved a domain that has thousands of links in Google to the server, that didn't get rid of the links. I didn't do any 301 redirect thing. Update the DNS records and every one will find your site at the new location, even bots.

A 301 redirect will not work if you only change your IP address - this function is for when your domain name changes.

If you only want to change IP address, leave the old site up if possible until Googlebot starts deep-crawling at your new IP address.

Google understands virtual hosting and will visit different domains even if they have the same IP.

Gringo.