> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://kb.hosting.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Do you support IP canonicalization?

> Yes, hosting.com supports IP canonicalization, one of many techniques used for SEO.

Yes, you can set up IP canonicalization for your account. IP canonicalization is a technique sometimes used for SEO (search engine optimization). When a site's IP address is canonicalized, the IP address redirects to the domain name.

For example, if visitors enter your IP address in their web browser, they should be redirected to *example.com* or *[www.example.com](http://www.example.com)* (where *example.com* represents your domain name). Otherwise, a search engine may index your site under both the IP address and the domain name. This duplicate content could potentially harm your site's search engine ranking.

<Warning>
  **Important**

  There is no guarantee that IP canonicalization will improve a site's search engine ranking. There are many SEO techniques available, and search engine providers (for obvious reasons) do not disclose which techniques hurt or help a site's ranking.
</Warning>

## Requirements

There are two requirements for setting up IP canonicalization:

* You must have a dedicated IP address.

* You must set up a rewrite rule in an .htaccess file that redirects your IP address to your domain name. For example, the following configuration lines demonstrate one possible implementation. Replace *xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx* with your own IP address, and replace *example.com* with your domain name:

```
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xxx\.xxx\.xxx\.xxx
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
```

<Note>
  For more information about how to use .htaccess files, please see [this article](/docs/using-htaccess-files).
</Note>