IP address being indexed by Google in addition to canonical domain.

[mikeimrie]

Our site's IP address is being indexed in addition to the canonical www.example.com domain.

As soon as it was flagged a 301 was implemented in the .htaccess file to redirect the IP address to the canonical.

Does this usually occur? Is it detrimental to SEO?

In my time in SEO I've never heard of this being an issue, or being part of a list of things to be checked. It sounds more like a server that wasn't configured correctly when hosting was set up?

It didn't seem to be affecting the site at all, but is it more common and I've just never heard of it? Should it be something I'm usually looking for in future?

Responses are greatly appreciated!

[CodyWheeler]

Gotta say I've never heard of this either, but I would say you're taking the correct course of action implementing a 301 to the correct URL. You may also want to throw a rel="canonical" tag on those pages if you haven't already - just for good measure.

That's certainly odd.

[ReneReinholdt]

I have actually seen this before. And since this was my own testing server I'm quite sure that it's bad server management. (since i'm no wizkid at servers.) so maybe one should test it. But as to what exactly is causing it? I'm clueless sorry.

[RyanKent]

I agree with Cody but would like to ask if you can offer a specific example. It always is helpful to look at the exact result.