Question:

Does hosting on a shared IP address hurt Google rankings?   Sites hosted with 3Essentials and other shared hosting providers, will by default have many websites hosted on a shared IP address... the webserver itself differentiates between sites by a host header in the request (the URL, i.e., www.domain.com) not by the IP address... although sites can also be hosted with a unique (or dedicated) IP address.   As a result, a debate has often been raised as to whether use of a shared IP address vs a dedicated IP address has a negative impact on your google search results placement.

Answer:

While 3Essentials doesn't offer SEO consulting services, and therefore does not profess to be an authority on this topic, we have fielded this question enough times to do some research.  Our position on this topic is that it is a myth, and we substantiate this with information from Craig Silverstein, Google's Director of Technology, as referenced in the following article:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/