When you’re trying to run a small business website, tiny technical issues can really hurt your Google rankings. One commonly overlooked issue we’ve seen amongst our clients is IP canonicalization. If that term makes your eyes glaze over, don’t worry—we’ll explain it in plain English.

By some estimates, over half of all website traffic comes from search engines^[1], so it’s worth fixing even the “small” SEO issues. So now, we’re going to cover what IP canonicalization is, how it impacts your SEO, and why it’s especially relevant for sites on shared hosting platforms like Hostinger, BlueHost, and HostGator. Whether your site runs on WordPress, Wix, or Shopify, we’ll show you how to check for this issue and fix it easily. Let’s dive in!

Key Takeaways

• What is IP Canonicalization: It means ensuring your website is accessible via one address (your domain name) and not by its raw IP address. This prevents duplicate versions of your site from appearing online.
• Why It Matters for SEO: If your site’s IP address shows the same content as your domain, search engines might see duplicate content – which can confuse them and potentially dilute your SEO rankings.
• Shared Hosting Factor: Websites on shared hosting (e.g., Hostinger, BlueHost, HostGator) often share server IPs. It’s important to make sure the server’s IP doesn’t independently serve your site’s content without redirecting to your domain.
• Easy Fixes on Popular Platforms: WordPress users can fix IP canonicalization easily with a plugin or simple settings. Wix and Shopify users typically don’t need to worry – these platforms handle domain issues for you automatically.
• Keep SEO Equity Unified: Fixing this issue ensures all your traffic and “link juice” credit goes to your proper domain, helping your site rank higher instead of splitting authority between two addresses.

What Is IP Canonicalization?

IP canonicalization is a fancy term for a simple concept: making sure your website is only reachable through your domain name (like www.yourbusiness.com) and not through the numerical IP address of the server (like 123.45.67.89). Every website lives on a server that has an IP address, but normally visitors use your easy-to-remember domain name to access it. Ideally, if someone tries to visit your site by its IP address, they should be automatically redirected to the real domain name. If that doesn’t happen, your site is essentially living at two addresses – which is not ideal for clarity or SEO.

Real-world example: Imagine your storefront had two different street addresses that lead to the same shop. Customers might get confused seeing two addresses for what is essentially one location. In the web world, if http://123.45.67.89 shows the same homepage as http://yourbusiness.com, search engines may interpret them as two separate copies of your site. This is where the term “canonical” comes in – you want to designate one canonical (official) address for your site (your domain) and have everything else redirect to it.

Why Does IP Canonicalization Affect SEO?

Duplicate versions of your site can be problematic for search engine optimization. As HubSpot’s technical SEO guide points out, “Duplicate content confuses search bots and negatively impacts your indexability.”^[2] In our context, if both your IP and your domain show the same site, Google sees duplicate content at two URLs.

Bringing us to the main SEO concerns:

1. Avoiding Duplicate Content Confusion

Search engines strive to index and rank a single version of content. When they find the same text and pages at two URLs (your IP and your domain), it creates uncertainty. The search algorithm has to decide which one to show to users. Google typically filters out one as duplicate, but it might not choose the one you prefer. In fact, Google’s own guidelines note that while non-malicious duplicate content won’t incur a penalty, the search engine will “do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show” in results (usually the domain)^[3]. The risk is that if the wrong version is chosen or if the presence of duplicates makes crawling less efficient, your content’s performance could suffer.

2. Consolidating SEO Power (Link Equity)

Another reason to fix IP canonicalization is to ensure all your SEO signals are pointing to one place. If some websites or users somehow link to your site’s IP address and others link to your domain name, you’re splitting your “link equity” between two URLs. Backlinks are a key factor in SEO authority. It’s much better to have 100% of your backlinks and traffic go to yourbusiness.com rather than some going to 123.45.67.89. By redirecting the IP to the domain, you consolidate all those ranking signals. This helps your unique content rank higher instead of competing with a duplicate version of itself. As a result, fixing this issue can marginally boost your site’s ability to rank by unifying traffic and links that were previously split up.

Shared Hosting and IP Canonicalization

Now, why is this especially relevant for sites on shared hosting? On a shared hosting plan (with providers like Hostinger, BlueHost, or HostGator), multiple websites share the same server and often the same IP address. Hosting companies typically assign one IP to many customer domains. If your site is the “primary” domain on that server, typing the server’s IP into a browser might actually load your website. For example, if you’re hosting JanesBakery.com on a shared server, going to http://123.45.67.89 (the server’s IP) might show Jane’s Bakery homepage even though the address bar just has the numbers. From a user perspective, that’s odd. From a search engine perspective, it looks like two different URLs with the same content (one URL is the numeric IP, the other is JanesBakery.com).

Many small business owners on shared hosting may not realize this is happening. It’s not a flaw of your hosting provider per se – it’s just the default behavior in many server setups. The good news is that this is usually easy to fix or might even already be handled by the host (some hosts automatically redirect the IP to the main domain or show a default landing page). But it’s worth checking, because not all do. SEO audit tools often flag “IP canonicalization issues” if they detect your site is accessible via its IP. If you get that warning, it’s a sign to take action so your site isn’t mistakenly viewed as duplicate content.

How to Check If Your Site Has an IP Canonicalization Problem

Checking for this issue is straightforward and non-technical. Here are two simple methods:

• 1. Browser Test: Find out your website’s server IP address (your hosting dashboard or cPanel will list it, or you can ping your domain in the command prompt). Then, type that IP (with http:// in front) into your web browser. What happens?
  • If your site loads at that IP address (you see your homepage without being redirected to your normal URL), you have an IP canonicalization issue. Your goal should be to make that IP URL automatically forward people (and search bots) to your real domain.
  • If the IP address doesn’t load your site (you might see a generic hosting page, an error, or a blank page), then you’re likely in the clear. The IP isn’t serving your content directly. You might already be safe, or your host has it configured correctly.
• 2. SEO Audit Tools: You can also use free SEO analyzers (like SEO Site Checkup or Sitechecker) which often include an “IP canonicalization” check in their site audit. They will tell you if your server IP is returning the same content as your domain. If the tool reports a fail on this check, you know you need to fix it.

The Easiest Way to Fix IP Canonicalization

Fixing IP canonicalization essentially means setting up a permanent redirect (HTTP 301 redirect) from the server’s IP address to your proper domain name. The approach differs slightly based on your platform, so let’s break it down by the most common ones: WordPress (on shared hosting), Wix, and Shopify.

Fixing IP Canonicalization on WordPress (Shared Hosting)

If your website is built with WordPress and hosted on a shared server, you have a lot of control and a few easy options:

• Use a Plugin: The simplest non-technical solution is to use a WordPress plugin that manages redirects. A popular choice is the Redirection plugin (free in the WordPress repository), which lets you create 301 redirects without touching code. You would install the plugin and set up a redirect so that requests to your IP address forward to your http://yourdomain.com. Many SEO plugins like Yoast SEO Premium or Rank Math also have redirect managers built-in, which you can use for this purpose.
• .htaccess Rule (for the tech-savvy): If you’re comfortable editing a file on your server, you can add a few lines to your site’s .htaccess file (common on Apache servers used by shared hosts). For example, you might add something like:
  RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^123\.45\.67\.89$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
  This rule says: if someone tried to reach 123.45.67.89 (replace that with your actual IP), then redirect them to yourdomain.com (preserving whatever page path they requested). If messing with server configuration isn’t your thing, don’t worry – a plugin or your host’s support can handle this for you.
• Ask Your Host: Another easy route is to simply contact your hosting support. Many shared hosting providers are familiar with this issue. Ask them, “Can you help me redirect the server’s IP address to my domain? I want all traffic to use my domain name.” They might set it up at the server level for you.

After implementing the fix, test it. Type your IP in the browser again – it should now instantly forward to yourdomain.com. This means search engines will only see your domain, preserving your SEO.

Fixing IP Canonicalization on Wix

If you built your site with Wix, the scenario is a bit different. Wix is a hosted website builder, which means you don’t have direct access to server settings or .htaccess files. The good news is that Wix handles most technical SEO concerns behind the scenes. Typically, your Wix site will only be accessible via your custom domain or the Wix subdomain (like yourname.wixsite.com). People cannot directly access your specific site via a numeric IP in Wix’s infrastructure – the IP address is shared among many sites and won’t know which site to show unless the request includes your domain name.

Bottom line for Wix users: You usually don’t need to fix anything because Wix won’t serve your site by the bare IP. Just ensure you’ve properly connected your own domain to your Wix site (using Wix’s DNS instructions). Wix automatically adds canonical tags to pages and will route traffic to your primary domain. If you’ve been using a free Wix subdomain and then add a custom domain, Wix will redirect the old URL to your new one. In short, Wix takes care of canonicalization for you in most cases. If you’re worried, you can always reach out to Wix support, but you’ll likely find this is not an issue on their platform.

Fixing IP Canonicalization on Shopify

Shopify, like Wix, is a hosted platform – but it’s specifically for e-commerce. When you use Shopify, your store is hosted on Shopify’s servers. You might notice in Shopify’s domain settings that they provide an IP address for your DNS A-record. However, if you try to visit that IP directly, you won’t get your store; Shopify’s servers will only show a store page when the correct host name (your Shopify domain or custom domain) is provided. In other words, just knowing the IP isn’t enough to load your shop.

For Shopify users: The main thing is to ensure you have a primary domain set. In your Shopify admin under Domains, you can set your custom domain (e.g. yourstore.com) as the primary and have all traffic redirect to it. This covers the canonical issue between your Shopify subdomain (yourstore.myshopify.com) and your custom domain. Shopify will handle that redirection automatically once configured. As for the raw IP, you won’t have the ability to set up server redirects for it (Shopify doesn’t expose those controls, since they manage the servers). The reality is that search engines are unlikely to ever index your store by the numeric IP – they will index it by your domain. Even if an SEO checker flags “IP canonicalization” for a Shopify site, there isn’t much you can do beyond what we just described, and it’s usually not a real-world problem. Shopify’s platform is built to serve sites by domain names, not IP addresses, by design.

To sum up, Wix and Shopify users generally get to breathe easy: these platforms inherently mitigate the issue, or there’s nothing critical you need to fix on your end. WordPress (and other self-hosted sites) have the flexibility – and responsibility – to set up things like IP redirects, but also the easy means to do so via plugins or host support.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Technical details like IP canonicalization might seem nitpicky, but addressing them can strengthen your website’s foundation. You’ve worked hard on your site’s content and marketing – don’t let something as simple as duplicate access points undermine that effort. By ensuring your site is only accessible through its proper domain, you’re telling Google and other search engines exactly which URL is the “main” one to index and rank. This helps protect your SEO performance and keeps all your traffic flowing to the right place.

The best part is that this is usually a one-time fix. Once your IP properly redirects to your domain, you can check it off your SEO checklist and move on to bigger things, like creating content or improving conversions. As Google’s own documentation reiterates, duplicate content isn’t likely to penalize you outright, but cleaning it up helps ensure your SEO “juice” isn’t diluted across duplicates^[3]. It’s about putting your best foot forward with search engines.

If you’re a busy small business owner, we know you have a million things on your plate. The good news is that solving IP canonicalization is quick and often free. It’s a small tweak that can give you peace of mind. And once you’ve handled it, you’ve made your site just a bit more robust in the eyes of Google.

Next SEO steps: consider exploring more resources on how to strengthen your site’s technical SEO and overall performance. For instance, ensure your site uses HTTPS, loads fast on mobile, and has proper meta tags. You can find more tips in our other SEO resources. If you’re unsure what to tackle next, you might want to request a free SEO audit from our team. We’re here to help identify what else can be improved so your website can climb those rankings.

Remember, effective SEO is about doing a lot of little things right. Fixing your IP canonicalization is one of those little-but-important things – and now you’ve got it covered. Happy optimizing!

References

1. Ahrefs – Why SEO Is Important: 8 Reasons (And How to Get Started) (2024) – Statistic on organic search driving 53% of website traffic.
2. WordPress.com – WordPress Market Share, Statistics, and More (2025) – Data on WordPress powering ~43% of websites (with Shopify at 4.8% and Wix at 3.7%).
3. Google Search Central – Demystifying the “duplicate content penalty” (Google Webmaster Blog, 2008) – Google’s clarification that non-malicious duplicate content won’t be penalized and that Google will choose a preferred URL to index.
4. HubSpot – Understanding Technical SEO: Audit Fundamentals + Detailed Checklists (2022) – Note that duplicate content confuses search engine bots and can hurt indexability.