Can an entire server get a penalty?

[Melvinjames18]

Seems that no one can be sure about that. I don't think Google will do that.

[Jeremy]

I had a reseller account with hostgator a couple years ago and had the same issue where every site on the server dropped in the SERPS.

What happened was that someone hacked the site and edited the DNS Zone of each domain on the server with a wildcard "*". By doing this they were able to setup a bunch of subdomains like freeviagara.mysite.com. All these subdomains then redirected to the I.P. of the wildcard. Of course it was spammy as hell in Googles eyes, so the sites were all penalized. I dug this up. This is what the redirect looked like from my cpanel.



Not sure if that is what happened with you, but knowing hostgator I wouldn't be surprised. If nothing else if anyone ever sees massive subdomains of their root that they didn't set-up hopefully they'll remember reading this post.

[CasinoKev]

Personally, I've been pleased with my Hostgator shared plan. Although I'd prefer a dedicated server for sure. Like MM said, it's unlikely that a whole server would be penalized. It sounds more like something to do with links.

One time I purchased a link from someone here, and it turned out that the site was penalized. My website went from the first page for its terms, to oblivion. After I had the person remove the link, rankings returned in a few weeks. I would check any recent links you've received.

The aimtrust links are just referrer spam. I have them in my logs as well. It looks like a reputable company, so I assume they hired someone for SEO that likes blackhat stuff.