prevent Google from indexing VM's external IP

Question

My setup:

Bitnami Wordpress
GCP VM
GCP HTTPs Load Balancer
Load Balancer has http to https redirection, www to non-www redirection
Cloud CDN

Main Problem:

The VM's external IP (22.22.22.22) is indexed by Google Search. I'm unable to remove it from Google Search because it is not recognized as a property that belongs to me and the indexed page (http://22.22.22.22/home) is live. http://22.22.22.22/home is resolved to example.com which is a live page.

what I have checked

The domain name and Load Balancer's IP is properly resolved
No new mod_rewrite rules other than those from the default installation
The site does not have any reference to VM's external IP, including database
No cache plugins installed
Wordpress's site address and home address is pointing to http://example.com

what I have done to rectify

I've added 301 redirects which I'm not sure if that helps. It will take some time to check if that works.

My questions

Is there a way to prevent Google from indexing IPs(Any IPs in general)?
How to prevent VM's ext. IP from being indexed by Google especially when load balancer is in use?

John Hanley · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-14T23:45:19.250

There is a simple solution but it takes time. Configure the Apache web server to redirect IP-based queries to your domain or return an error. Google Search will eventually notice the redirect and remove the IP address from search queries.

For redirects, use a permanent redirect (301).

301 Moved Permanently

How To Create Temporary and Permanent Redirects with Apache and Nginx

There are WordPress plugins to do the same, but I prefer to configure Apache directly and not add another plugin to a site.