Weird - Yahoo showing the IP now instead of the domain

[TopNet]

Ok, this is weird. A client of mine had a #1 ranking in Yahoo but it is now gone. Thing is, he is not delisted at all, his listings are simply to his IP now instead of his domain. So when I query yahoo for "hostname:domain.com" nothing comes up, but when I query it for "hostname:xx.xx.xx.xx" it shows all his pages by IP instead of domain.

All that to ask...how do we get this changed so they index his domain which has all his backlinks (and thus his link pop/ranking) instead of his IP? He has asked Yahoo and they don't reply.

[jdMorgan]

Can't give you a detailed answer, since you didn't state what kind of server the site is hosted on. But the answer is to configure your server so that if any page on the site is requested using anything but the preferred canonical domain name, the server will generate a 301-Moved Permanently redirect to the same page in the canonical domain.

For example, here are some browser requests, and the server response:

Request .................................. Response 
GET http://www.example.com/ .............. Serve index page 
GET http://www.example.com/widget.html ... Serve widget page 
GET http://example.com/ .................. 301 redirect to http://www.example.com/ 
GET http://192.168.0.1/ .................. 301 redirect to http://www.example.com/ 
GET http://example.com/index.html ........ 301 redirect to http://www.example.com/ 
GET http://example.com/widget.html ....... 301 redirect to http://www.example.com/widget.html 

It is important that one page on your site have one and only one URL. Otherwise, you open yourself up to accidental and maliciously-intended problems like this.

We have had extensive discussions here on domain canonicalization issues -- try searching WebmasterWorld for more information on canonical domains [google.com] and related terms.

Jim

[TopNet]

That's perfect, thanks Jim! I assume this will tell Yahoo to reindex the pages properly since they are permanently moved?

[TopNet]

Turns out the removal WAS malicious! Some anonymous Chinese bugger sent this to my client today!

"I remove you from Yahoo...ever wonder how I do it? Next one must be the google."

Any ideas how he did it?

[tedster]

Well, linking to the site from a number other sites using the IP address instead of domain name is one way. A certain clueless newspaper did that last year for one of my clients and the bad "base" url began to spread through the listings as Slurp just continued following relative links from the original page.

We took two steps:

1. 301 as above post
2. include a <base href=""> element in the head of each page.

And the "erosion" stopped.

[TopNet]

Thanks Ted :-)

So, it's just a matter of waiting for the slurp to re-index then, since we already did the 301 redirect?

[ken_b]

So how does linking to an ip affect sites that are on shared ip addresses?

Would this:

GET [192.168.0.1...] .................. 301 redirect to http://www.example.com/

...work if you are on a shared ip address?

[abates]

If you're on a shared IP and someone links to the IP address, the server won't know which site's being addressed and (I think) load a generic server page. This should prevent any problem in the search engines, as it won't be duplicate content.

[monsterhair]

We have the same thing with MSN and only MS?