Can Cloudflare Obfuscate the Hosting Provider Behind the PBN Sites if Setup Properly?

Silong said:

Hi,
In case of creating a successful PBN, I am planning to keep a cluster of sites in a certain hosting provider and then individually register for each site for cloudflare using different cloudflare account for each site and cleanup the DNS entries by removing redundant info like mx field etc. so that from DNS lookup, the hosting provider can't be judged. By following this method can't we successfully obfuscate the hosting provider? I am concerned about footprints, but given the design of how CDNs like cloudflare work, I think the hosting should be obscured properly. I would like to invite the experienced PBN builders to comment in this with what they think about this approach.
Thanks in advance. Cheers.

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1. Don't buy or host your websites with Google. LL
2. Ensure your register supports private whois
3. DNS, web host, & register domains by different providers. (layer up!)
4. 1 Cloudflare account per domain (1 NS record each)
5. 1 email per domain to support things like GA/GSC/GTM...
6. Some hosting providers offer multiple IPs for a low monthly cost (optional)
7. Do not use shared SSL certificates.
8. Do not use the same browser or IP to manage the site and site assets. (tin foil hat paranoid)
9. Do not link your sites together, use similar content, have similar external links, and if you can/want to go the mile, do not use the same design.

hideath said:

Practically, anyone will still know if these websites are hosted under the same IP/server,
Simply by checking the DNS records which points to the same IP,
I have no idea if Google is checking these records or not at all, but that's some kind of footprint for sure,

Now, for whether this can work or not depends on the number of PBN websites hosted, the links already pointing to your money site(s),
As well as the other footprints left while building the PBN itself, the authority of the domains (expired or new) used for the PBN and how you're building it,

I have a small PBN of several websites using this tactic, all hosted in the exact same server with separate CF account for each,
Each of the websites is well built with unique design, pics, theme, content, pages, etc... i would say minimal footprints and not totally hidden,
Each is built using a decent clean expired domain with the cheapest costing $$$ (up to $$$$),
They got restored and been aged for at least a month before adding any link,
Each is pointing to 2-5 niche relevant money sites, which each got at least 100s of RDs,
They're doing the work pretty decently, the majority has been there for several years and a couple added recently,
Some of them are getting pretty decent traffic & ranking,

It all depends on how spammy your network is, as well as the websites you're pointing the PBN to,
I would say that as long as you keep the quality decent enough, it will work without problems

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Steptoe said:

It sounds like you're going about it the right way, you seem to be plugging the usual leaks that will expose original IPs (redundant subdomains etc) and using different CF accounts so that you get a new pair of name servers to use. Depending on how big your PBN grows to, you may want to think about diversifying your CDN/DNS provider, but for smaller networks using CF on all domains should be ok.

If you haven't read it already, this guide is still a goldmine of advice on the PBN subject: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/the-ultimate-pbn-guide.1360359/

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3mc33 said:

I am not an expert at this, but I do understand tracing a little bit. Masking the network is probably easier than managing the logistics of the content and links. I would assume this is the more common pitfall of PBNs.

1. Don't buy or host your websites with Google. LL
2. Ensure your register supports private whois
3. DNS, web host, & register domains by different providers. (layer up!)
4. 1 Cloudflare account per domain (1 NS record each)
5. 1 email per domain to support things like GA/GSC/GTM...
6. Some hosting providers offer multiple IPs for a low monthly cost (optional)
7. Do not use shared SSL certificates.
8. Do not use the same browser or IP to manage the site and site assets. (tin foil hat paranoid)
9. Do not link your sites together, use similar content, have similar external links, and if you can/want to go the mile, do not use the same design.

Technically speaking there are always footprints...
Finding the hosting provider or domain provider is not hard. Not sure what could be done with this from Google's end with this information though. Not like Google can call up the hosting company and request for the source IP lol...PBNs are not illegal

To check on yourself, for DNS you can check things like security trails for DNS logs. WhatsmyDNS is great for active DNS entries.

Some domain providers auto-set setup DNS. So long as you don't have a record of the source IP you should be good.

Worst case you made a mistake, just move hosting providers! Can't imagine what they could do with an old source IP address. Could you imagine if Google penalized an entire cluster of sites based on old source IP? Shared hosting environments that stuff a million sites on a single IP would be hammered.

It's most likely not even worth Google's time to reverse proxy a masked IP on CloudFlare or manually piece the network together. Imagine someone so dedicated to manually tracing you down to find your PBN cluster. You'd have to be a pretty big fish making some pretty big waves!

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seojay said:

Googlebot does not see your real IP. Period. End of discussion.

No conjecture in this thread will change that fact.

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