If your website loads by domain name address and IP address, search engines see these addresses as duplicate versions of the same page. So, this case is similar to appearance duplicate content in www / non-www and HTTP / https versions. So canonicalization redirects your IP address to the hostname. It works for SEO needs. When your website IP address is canonicalized, it redirects to the main domain hosted. As you may know, the duplicate content found on your website can harm your search engine ranking, so you can set up the process of selecting the appropriate URL for your website. We talk about such variants:
- www.website.com
- www.website.com/index.php
- website.com
- website.com/index.php
Canonical tags make your all urls those lead to a single address or webpage into a single url. Like :
<link rel=`canonical` href=`https://mywebsite.com/home` /><link rel=`canonical` href=`https://www.mywebsite.com/home` />
Both refer to the link mywebsite.com/home. So all the different URLs with the same content or page now comes under the link or URL mywebsite.com/home. Which will boost up your search engine ranking by eliminating content duplication? Use canonical tags for all the same URLs.
To conclude, IP canonicalization prevents your website from duplicate content indexing.
How to avoid IP canonicalization?
You should set a redirect from an IP address to the main domain name address. If you don`t know whether such a redirect already exists, you can use the IP canonicalization test from the SEOBase tool. It shows whether your domain redirects to a domain name you entered. Also, use an IP address checker that shows your real public IP address – IPv4 – IPv6.
How to fix it?
you can create .htaccess & add the next lines to your .htaccess to overwhelm the duplicate content on Search Engines.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^82\.223\.246\.132
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 (http://www.domain.com/$1) [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ http://www.domain.com/$1 (http://www.domain.com/$1) [R=301,L]
This is for auto WWW, auto redirect from Domain.com[or]index.html to Website Domains Names & Hosting.
