Hello,
Thank you for reaching out with your concerns about hiding your server’s IP from Google while using Rank Math on multiple sites hosted on the same server.
When using Rank Math, Google will not be able to directly associate all your sites with you based on the server IP. Rank Math provides options to anonymize IP addresses in Google Analytics, which helps in keeping your visitors’ IP addresses anonymous in your Analytics data. This feature masks the last octet of the IP address, ensuring that the full IP address is not saved in Google Analytics.
If you are worried about Google knowing that all your sites are hosted on the same server, enabling the “Anonymize IP Addresses” feature in Rank Math will help address this concern. By activating this feature, the full IP address of the visitor will never be saved, and it remains anonymous in your Analytics data.
Regarding your question about using Google Search Console without connecting Google Analytics, Rank Math allows you to choose which services to connect. You can connect only the Google Search Console account and choose not to use Google Analytics if you prefer to use Matomo Analytics instead. This way, you can control the data shared with Google and use alternative analytics solutions like Matomo.
If you have any more questions or need further assistance, please feel free to ask. We are here to help!
Regards.
Sources:
How to Anonymize IPs with Google Analytics With Rank Math
Can You Use Rank Math Along With Google Site Kit? » Rank Math
Rank Math General Settings
How to Setup Rank Math SEO Plugin Properly
Rankbot is confused between the “Anonymize IP Addresses” feature for Google Analytics with hiding the server’s IP from the Google API service while fetching GoogleSearchConsole data.
Does RankMath fetch the data 1st from Google’s server and later move the processed data from RankMath’s server to the client’s server?
Thanks.
Hello,
Thank you for contacting support.
There’s no way for anyone to know whether or not to use the IP addresses to make a connection between websites but it’s highly unlikely. Google treats each website independently no matter the IP address and if they belong to the same range.
If we imagine websites hosted on the same shared server but from different people, they would also have the same range of the server and they would not belong to the same person.
So, although the IP address data is likely collected it’s not being used to associate websites with each other.
Regarding the question about Analytics, you don’t need to use Google Analytics if you don’t want but please note that we only integrate with GA and not with Matomo.
In terms of data fetch, that is taken directly from the Google APIs to your website via scheduled actions running in the background.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Great support. Thanks for the detailed explanation. Great day.
Hello,
We are super happy that this resolved your issue. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.
If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.
If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.
Thank you.
