IP And URL Canonicalization Checker Services And Tools

Be A Successful SEO Expert

Be A Successful SEO Expert!

IP and URL Canonicalization: Why is it important to know about? What if you get “False” results back when you examine your site? How to check and solve the issues (if any…)?

If you want to get answers to these questions, continue reading, please.

First, I’d like to explain the meaning of URL canonicalization.

For the definition – of the most real authentic source of URL Canonicalization -, I’ll quote Mr Matt Cutts (Google): “Seo advice: URL canonicalization…Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

  • www.example.com
  • example.com/
  • www.example.com/index.html
  • example.com/home.asp

But technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, we try to pick the url that seems like the best representative from that set.” – taken from Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO; Seo advice: url canonicalization; Posted January 4, 2006 in Google/SEO, https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/ .

Note: About https://example.com: “This domain is established to be used for illustrative examples in documents. You may use this domain in examples without prior coordination or asking for permission. IANA-managed Reserved Domains: Certain domains are set aside, and nominally registered to “IANA”, for specific policy or technical purposes…As described in RFC 2606, a number of domains such as example.com and example.org for documentation purposes. These domains may be used as illustrative examples in documents without prior coordination with us. They are not available for registration or transfer.” – taken from http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved.

This definition may seem a bit complicated at first sight, and really not as easy as e.g. publishing a post.
However, our task for today is to find a Canonicalization Checker Tool among the various SEO Services, I’d like to explain its meaning and practical application first from the eye point of an average Internet user for better understanding.

When you search the Internet, you’ll find their various sites beginning with “www.”, without www, “http://www.sitename.yyy”,”http://sitename.yyy”, “https://www.sitename.yyy”, “https://sitename.yyy” (.yyy extension can be .com, .info, cc and anything else related to your website address)).
As an average user, usually, you even don’t bother with understanding the difference but the result only. If you are a webmaster, it is more than advisable to know the difference. The main goal of IP canonicalization is to redirect the web pages which are labelled as duplicate content.

Now you can see the importance of the canonicalization process: instead of relying on the “good decision” of the particular search engine – like Google, Bing and Yahoo or others -, you should define the most appropriate URL for your content.

To cut the long story short, in the case your target pages have the same issues and if you had decided which URL was the first and most relevant one, you can give a definition by embedding the line into the section of all site pages.

Please take care, that the Canonicalization process is not the same as a “301” – Permanent Redirect command. However, there can be similarities.
Canonicalization will tell the search engines that multiple pages should be considered to one like “301 Redirect” command does, but it works only within the root directory of your domain and with the pages belonging to this particular domain, based on your own intention and decision. On the other “301” has a so-called cross-domain functionality, that is you can permanently redirect one page – or the entire site – to domain1, domain2 names and so on.

On WordPress sites, the software itself will give you a solution for the URL Canonicalization of your homepage. But, it is another story (I’ll deal with it in a post soon).
Now, I’d like to introduce some Services dealing with checking IP and URL Canonicalization:

Which SEO Tools can help us in Checking IP and URL Canonicalization?

For checking HTTP headers – and IP Canonicalization – you can find more sites with similar tools such as HTTPStatus.io, Statscrop.com, SEOSiteCheckUp.com, WOORank.com, and more.
First of all, I’d like to introduce the simplest-to-use HTTP Status Checker Tool: https://httpstatus.io, where you can easily check your HTTP Status.  This site itself can give to most appropriate and direct results in this specific question, plus you will find more useful SEO Tools as well. The best thing is, that it works correctly, and is absolutely free. I also use it myself sometimes, too.
Let’s see our work now!

What is IP canonicalization and how to check it?

As the definition states, your site’s IP, that is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx number should redirect – the IP points – to your site’s domain name. If not, this could cause duplicate content problems if a search engine indexes your site under both, that is its IP and domain name.
Here come some difficulties that many people may misunderstand. I’d like to explain from my point of view, based on my previous experiences.

If your site is a “standalone” one (interpreted: as dedicated IP, assigned only to this domain name), that is its IP address IS the same as your domain name, this definition is right. If your site is hosted on a Shared IP address, this rule can be true only within the root directory of the domain, and not for the IP address. How to check and solve it? This is our job for today.

Checking IP and URL Canonicalization in practice:

When you create a new account with a domain hosting provider for your domain, you’ll be given an IP address. In this case, we’ll meet two ways concerning your IP address. I’ll begin with the most common, the shared account:

1. Shared hosting account – IP and URL Canonicalization Check:

If your account is a shared account – most of them are shared -, your domain will become a “part” of the group of other domains which use the same IP address. You can check these domains out – by using the “Reverse IP Lookup” command, it depends on the offered service of several SEO Site Status Checker sites – within a minute.

In order to check IP and URL Canonicalization, we’d need a domain name. I’d suggest you try it on your own domain (it doesn’t hurt at all). Please follow these simple steps below:

Step 1 – Checking your domain without www:

Be sure, that if you type in your browser the name of your domain, you’ll land on your own page. Now, open a new browser tab (or window), and go to http://web-sniffer.net – View HTTP Request and Response Header site. Type in your domain name, first WITHOUT www.
Fill in the captcha correctly and click on SUBMIT button.
Now, you’ll get the results. If your site – domain name – is registered and used WITHOUT www, AND you check this situation with e.g. StatsCrop, you’ll get the following:
Status: HTTP/1.1 200 OK. What does it mean? Your basic setting is using the domain WITHOUT www.

Step 2- Check the same domain with www:

Go back to the HTTP(S)-URL box, and type in your domain name WITH www. Solve the captcha and submit.
Now, supposing the correct setting of your domain, you’ll get:
Status: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently. What does it mean? Your domain containing www IS REDIRECTED correctly to the domain without www.

Now, finishing these tests, check out your IP address. When you are on Web Sniffer, you’ll see your IP, just under the HTTP Request Header title. It will look like xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (currently, in the case of IPv4). Let’s move to Step 3.

Step 3 – Checking your IP address 

After picking up your IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx), type in your IP using the same box you did in Step 2 and Step 3. Solve the captcha, and see the results.
You’ll be surprised!
The result of checking (see the content box where the content of the examined site is displayed) shows, that you landed on a completely different site (except for the case, when your domain is the first on the hosting list, and your cPanel is connected to this IP directly)!
How can it happen? Because you are on a Shared Hosting Account, your IP is also shared (this explains its name). A simple question might come into your mind at once:

Can a Shared IP be harmful from SEO aspects? In other words: do you really need a dedicated IP address for SEO benefits?

Mainly, not your IP address is the most important, but the relation to other websites. Put it the other way around, Google really does care in regards to the IP addresses of the websites linking to you.
This is a crucial distinction because your IP address DOES NOT matter. That is, basically, hosting on a shared IP has zero impact on your SEO results.
However, the IP addresses of the parents linking to you DO matter. Why? Google doesn’t like the so-called link farms, that is link networks. These link farms can be easily discovered by Google’s advanced, sophisticated and enhanced internet spiders, the so-called web crawlers.
What Google wants to see is that you are popular around the world (a whole bunch of various websites with completely different owners and unique IP addresses linking to you), not just amongst the 30 different websites all hosted in the same place. Otherwise, you can quickly lose your entire site’s PageRank and your links can be removed even from their index as well.

According to my experience, on Shared Accounts your domain host itself offers a solution for the IP with redirections within the main IP.
How can they do this? They use so-called Addon Domains within a given Hosting Account, and they will take off the correct Domain Name Redirection. But, it is another long story and not our topic today.

Back to the tests: don’t worry about Shared accounts! This can be the main reason why the classic IP Canonicalization test will not give you authentic results, that is “Failed” test results. But, this kind of IP redirection (Canonicalization) will not substitute the Canonicalization within your root directory, so you can still have issues there, that is be careful. Consequently, as advised and in order to avoid any issues, double-check the Canonicalization concerning your domain in your root directory as well.

2. Dedicated IP – IP and URL Canonicalization Check:

If your domain is the only one on the hosting account – and the DNS setting are correct -, its IP number is surely the same as your domain name. In this case, when you carry out the test I wrote above (in the case of the Shared IP Hosting Account), you’ll get back your own site as the result. According to the definition of IP Canonicalization, if you enter your IP (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) on your browser, you should land on your own page. If it doesn’t happen, this event really can cause issues, so you would need to check it out more carefully and investigate the possible reasons.

Conclusion – about IP and URL Canonicalization:

From the Search Engine Optimization perspective, IP and URL Canonicalization is essential for a website. When you find yourself having a website which has some internal pages also (for example, it may happen to promote the almost same product with the same description, and content) and the content on the other internal web page is the same or similar to another URL on your web site then it may be an issue to your web site, and you should find a solution to solve this problem.

Additionally, in order to avoid any issues and possibly penalties, please take care of the correct IP and URL Canonicalization on your website.

I hope I could help you in your work by sharing my ideas and experience, together with presenting some SEO Service Tools for Checking IP and URL Canonicalization.

Thank you for reading!