The Edward Show Does Cloudflare Hurt SEO? Google (and SEOs) Respond
Aug 26, 2025
In this discussion, experts tackle the concerns surrounding Cloudflare's shared IP addresses and their potential SEO risks. A shocking case study reveals that a site lost all its rankings after enabling Cloudflare, only to recover when it was disabled. The debate between shared hosting and dedicated IPs is front and center, with insights from Google’s John Mueller and reactions from the SEO community. Listeners will gain clarity on whether to be worried about shared IP addresses and how they affect SEO rankings.
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Dedicated IPs Outperformed In One Experiment
- A controlled SEO experiment showed a dedicated IP vastly outperformed shared hosting in rankings.
- The study found the dedicated IP site captured nine of ten top SERP positions while the shared one ranked lower.
IndiaCarNews Case: Rankings Dropped With Cloudflare
- IndiaCarNews lost almost all organic traffic and rankings overnight after enabling Cloudflare and recovered after disabling it.
- Re-enabling Cloudflare produced the same drop, suggesting a correlation in this one case.
Cloudflare Replaces Your Site IP With Shared Proxies
- Enabling Cloudflare changes a site's visible IP to Cloudflare's proxy IPs and those are shared among many sites.
- This creates a perception that a "bad neighborhood" could impact SEO if neighboring sites are problematic.