Why is my servers ip address showing up in Webmaster Tools?
-
In links to my site in Google Webmaster Tools I am showing over 28,000 links from an ip address. The ip address is the address that my server is hosted on. For example it shows 200.100.100.100/help, almost like there are two copies of my site, one under the domain name and one under the ip address. Is this bad? Or is it just showing up there and Google knows that it is the same since the ip and domain are from the same server?
-
Hmmm, this is a weird one. My guess is, since Google originally found those links (maybe before your site launched, but the pages were linked to and live through the IP address?), it keeps returning to them and finding them. In that case, not much you can do, but keep those canonicals on.
Canonicals really can save you from duplicate content problems: I've had clients with multiple versions of every page based on the path you take to a page, and canonicals have allowed them to rank well and avoid penalties entirely. As long as you're doing everything else right, hopefully this shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Sorry this ended up falling on you!
-
According to my latest links in Webmaster Tools the first time it happened was October 2012, which is before the site launch. It seems to have accelerated this year. It is a total of 16341 links but under linked pages it only says 27.
-
Hm, this could have, though. When did you first notice these backlinks from the IP address in GWT?
-
I am unsure to be honest. We had an organic traffic drop in 2012 the week of the penguin release. We launched a new site last year which killed organic so I am trying to improve our rankings. I can say confidently we have had nothing in Webmaster Tools, but maybe it has hurt traffic.
-
Well, from an SEO perspective, this hasn't lead to any penalties or reduced rankings, right?
-
Recently we switched to https so I started using self-referential rel="canonical" on all my pages. I can't figure this out, and nobody else can either. I am on all sorts of boards, forums, groups, and nobody has ever heard of this. I just don't get it.
-
Did you add canonicals, at least, to make sure that Google wouldn't find duplicate content? That's what I'd be most worried about, from an SEO perspective.
-
I never solved the problem. I made a new post to see if anything has changed. It seems strange that nobody else has ever had this problem. I looked all over Google and nothing. I just ran Screaming Frog and nothing showed up.
-
How is this going? Did you solve the problem?
One quick note: if you can't find a link to the IP address on your site (or, a link to a broken link or an old domain), run a Screaming Frog or Xenu crawl and look at all external links. There's probably a surprise footer link or something like that that's causing the problem, and it'd be easy to miss manually. But tools find all!
Good luck.
-
Yeah it's generally a DNS setup. If you're hosting with a company the best thing to do is open a ticket and get them to walk through it with you. Most providers will have their own admin panels.
-
I have looked and can't find anything in the site that goes from ip. I have looked in Webmaster Tools and it doesn't show any duplicate content. We are on a Windows server, think it would be pretty easy to redirect the ip to the domain?
-
There might be a link or something directing the crawlers to your site's IP address instead of the original domain. There is potential for getting flagged with duplicate content but I feel it's fairly unlikely. You do want to fix this though, it would hamper your backlink efforts. These steps will correct this issue.
1. Setup canonical tags on all your pages. This lets Google know that 1 url should be linked for this page whether they're on the IP or domain.
2. Set your host up so that anything that directs to the IP is automatically redirected to the domain. This can be done with your hosting company, or through .htaccess, or through PHP. I suggest you do it with the hosting company.
3. Check through your site and make sure no links point to the IP domain. If there are no links pointing to the IP, the crawler shouldn't follow.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Places Tools To Find Duplicate Listings?
Hey guys, Any recommended tools - paid or processes to find duplicate listings for Google Places? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickstar0 -
Change of address webmaster tools
Hi dear experts; I trying to migration to https and follow the guide line that explain how to do it. After redirect 301, I created new property on WMT for ssl version and change the pre address to new one. but as you can see in the attach file, the new property does not appear in the list. the old version of domain is: sharifconsult.ir the new one is : https://sharifconsult.ir yd9fL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoiransite0 -
URL Parameter Setting Recommendation - Webmaster Tools, Breadcrumbs & 404s
Hi All, We use a parameter called "breadCrumb" to drive the breadcrumbs on our ecommerce product pages that are categorized in multiple places. For example, our "Blue Widget" product may have the following URLs: http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doug_G
http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=BrandTree_
http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=CategoryTree1_
http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=CategoryTree2_ We use a canonical tag pointing back to the base product URL. The parameter only changes the breadcrumbs. Which of the following, if any, settings would you recommend for such a parameter in GWT: Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? Options: Yes/No
How does this parameter affect page content? Options: Narrows/Specifies/Other Currently, google decided to automatically assign the parameter as "Yes/Other/Let Googlebot Decide" without notifying us. We noticed a drop in rankings around the suspected time of the assignment. Lastly, we have a consistent flow of products that are discontinued that we 404. As a result of the breadcrumb parameter, our 404s increase significantly (one for each path). Would 800 404 crawl errors out of 18k products cause a penalty on a young site? We got an "Increase in '404' pages' email from GWT, shortly after our rankings seemed to drop. Thank you for any advice or suggestions! Doug0 -
Why do Local "5 pack" results vary between showing Google+, Google+ and website address
I had a client ask me a good question. When they pull up a search result they show up at the top but only with a link to their G+ page. Other competitors show their web address and G+ page. Why are these results different in the same search group? Is there a way to ensure the web address shows up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Best software or online tool to create Videos
Kindly let me know best software or online tool to create videos for website and youtube. I am also looking for animation videos etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
Malicious site pointed A-Record to my IP, Google Indexed
Hello All, I launched my site on May 1 and as it turns out, another domain was pointing it's A-Record to my IP. This site is coming up as malicious, but worst of all, it's ranking on keywords for my business objectives with my content and metadata, therefore I'm losing traffic. I've had the domain host remove the incorrect A-Record and I've submitted numerous malware reports to Google, and attempted to request removal of this site from the index. I've resubmitted my sitemap, but it seems as though this offending domain is still being indexed more thoroughly than my legitimate domain. Can anyone offer any advice? Anything would be greatly appreciated! Best regards, Doug
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FranGen0 -
Google Webmaster Tools Sitemap errors for phantom urls?
Two weeks ago we changed our urls so the correct addresses are all lowercase. Everything else 301 redirects to those. We have submitted and made sure that Google has downloaded our updated sitemap several times since. Even so, Webmaster Tools is reporting 33000 + errors in our sitemap for urls that are no longer in our sitemap and haven't been for weeks. It claims to have found the errors within the last couple of days but the sitemap has been updated for a couple of weeks and has been downloaded by Google at least three times since. Here is our sitemap: http://www.aquinasandmore.com/urllist.xml Here are a couple of urls that Webmaster Tools says are in the sitemap: http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-gifts/Caroline-Gerhardinger-Large-Sterling-Silver-Medal/sku/78664
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot
Redirect error unavailable
Oct 7, 2011
http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-gifts/Catherine-of-Bologna-Small-Gold-Filled-Medal/sku/78706
Redirect error unavailable
Oct 7, 20110 -
Do i need different IP addresses for mini sites?
Hi everyone We are currently building some non-advertorial based mini sites the link to a main "money site", these mini sites are all run off wordpress or similar and have different designs, however all the WHOIS data remains under one company. So therefore I dont know if really you need different Class C IP's anymore as google et al will just look at the whois records and link the websites up that way? Is this tactic still worth doing? Thanks for any input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOwins0