Dedicated I.P. vs. Shared I.P.
 

Does having a dedicated server/IP to a website make a difference in traffic/google rank/ect.? Does having a shared I.P. make your site look similar to all the other sites hosted on the shared server?

Google's algorithm is top secret and nobody knows for fact, but, it is common theory that if you are building links to your sites from your own sites, they need to be on different ips or google *may* not count them towards inbound link points.

Plus each person out there is going to have their opinion on this subject.

That makes sense. I wonder if they judge a site by the other sites on the same server.

It's not just the IP but everything. For instance if the IPs are different but the whois is the same then Google might still figure it out and see the relationship.

If you are just making normal sites and not planning on doing anything sketchy I wouldn't worry about it too much. Google probably can determine with a high degree of accuracy whether a site is on dedicated or shared hosting. Further it probably knows enough to not penalize sites which are completely unrelated -- in other words there are no shared direct links -- simply because they share an IP (but say have totally different Whois and structures). With all the sites on shared hosting it would be ridiculous for Google to penalize all the other sites on that same IP simply for that reason alone.