PR different for domain name and its dedicated IP... is it possible?

[McMohan]

A site of mine had its TBPR reduce from 4 to 2 in the last PR update. It is hosted on a dedicated IP. But if I load the site by its IP, the toolbar shows the old PR of 4. Cache dates are same. In my limited experience, I haven't seen this before. Any ideas? Thanks.

[dusky]

Probably more important sites are linking to your site by its IP address and some by its domain name, hence maybe your overall PR and trustrank is split by 2 for the domain name!
It could among other reasons be that a duplicate filter is in place, treating IP and domain as duplicate content if both are linked to from other sites (or yours). Also, maybe the PR is yet to be updated for the IP, in any case it's wise to 301 redirect one to the other, whichever is the strongest in links / PR and SERPS etc to avoid duplicate content filters AKA penalties.

[Robert Charlton]

...in any case it's wise to 301 redirect one to the other, whichever is the strongest in links / PR and SERPS...

If you were considering a site where you were showing identical content on two different domains, yes, you would be wise to make this kind of assessment. But in the case of a domain name and its IP, you've got no choice. You must redirect the IP to the domain name.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 8:16 am (utc) on Oct. 14, 2008]

[McMohan]

Thanks for your reply.

I have scanned all the links and none link to the IP address. Plus, if I run an info:(IP address) command in Google, it shows details for the domain name, meaning Google hasn't indexed them separately. So, I am not sure if it is a case of duplicate sites (Domain name and IP), like in case of canonical URLs or HTTP and HTTPS.

There may be more to this case. I have reasons to believe this site may have been penalized for some reason. Can it be that the penalty applies to the domain name, not its IP?

[drall]

We had something like this happen when we forgot to 301 one of our sites.

A competitor heavy linked to the ip and by the time we noticed the www. version went straight to hell.

We went ahead and setup the 301 and it took the usual 6 months for the dupe penalty to get lifted from the www. version.