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When a webmaster was looking at his site data in Google Webmaster Tools, he noticed that one of the "Pages with external links" was linking to his IP address and not his site. He's pretty baffled about why that would be the case. He has no way of reconciling this as far as he's investigated, and it looks like it may not even be possible from what Tedster says.
This kind of thing can happen when some inept webmaster links to you using your ip address - I once had this happen with a link from a major newspaper! Ionly discovered the source through the server log referers - not through a link report from any search engine. Apparently Webmaster Tools got this crossed up in your case, however it happened that they found the ip address.
That sucks. A lot. It especially sucks if they decide to use your IP address when you're on shared hosting and the link never shows up to the reader. It's a poor user experience all around and nobody really benefits. Please consider to use a real URL and not an IP when you link to people. Thank you on behalf of all competent webmasters and users.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Michael Martinez
03/11/2008 04:00 pm
There was a time in the 90s (before shared IP addressing became common) when IP links were very common. I wouldn't call someone who links to an IP address inept. There could be other reasons for such a link.
Brian Mark
03/11/2008 04:02 pm
Give it a proper rewrite rule and those links get redirected and counted. Really stinks if you ever change hosting, though.
gabs
03/11/2008 04:39 pm
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2F64.194.241.130%2F :)
No Name
03/11/2008 04:42 pm
If you redirect them the stats will be counted which is good however, the people that are bypassing this will lose out if you decide to change hosting or ip's.
Barry Schwartz
03/11/2008 04:47 pm
Thanks gabs. ;-)