IPv6 Support Test

What is an IPv6 test and what does this tool check?

An IPv6 test measures from DNS records whether a domain is reachable over IPv6. In short, it tells you whether your site has an address on the newer internet protocol. This tool queries your domain from our server and puts the answer on a single report card:

• Root name and www: does each name have a global AAAA record?
• IPv4 fallback: can visitors on IPv4 still reach the site?
• Address type: is the address in the record routable on the internet, or is it a local or documentation address?

However, the tool does not measure your own connection. If you want to know whether your connection has an IPv6 address, use the what is my IP tool. To see every record type at once, the DNS lookup tool fits better.

I run this check above all after server changes. The reason is simple: during a website migration teams update the A record, but they often forget the old AAAA record.

Why can you no longer ignore IPv6?

An IPv4 address has 32 bits, so the whole space holds roughly 4.3 billion addresses. That pool ran dry long ago. For example, RIPE NCC, the registry for Europe including the UK, ran out of IPv4 addresses on 25 November 2019. IPv6, in contrast, solves the problem for good with a 128 bit address space.

Usage is moving fast as well. Internet Society Pulse reports that the share of users reaching Google over IPv6 passed 50 percent for the first time on 28 March 2026 (50.10 percent). However, countries differ a lot. Google's per country data for 20 September 2026 shows 75.40 percent in Germany. The United States stands at 55.54 percent and the United Kingdom at 52.37 percent.

So in both the US and the UK, more than half of Google's users already arrive over IPv6. If your site sells to those markets, a large part of your visitors sits on IPv6 networks right now. As a result, an AAAA record is no longer a technical extra; it belongs to the basic quality of access.

How do you read and write an AAAA record?

An AAAA record is the IPv6 counterpart of the A record: it maps a domain to a 128 bit address. Specifically, the address consists of eight groups of hexadecimal digits separated by colons. That makes it look long at first, but two shortening rules make it easier to read:

• Leading zeros drop: you write db8 instead of 0db8.
• Consecutive zero groups become :: : you may use this shortcut only once per address.

For example, 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0010 shortens to 2001:db8::10. In addition, one domain can hold both A and AAAA records. People call this a dual stack setup, and it is the recommended layout today.

In your DNS panel you enter @ in the name field for the root and www for the www name. Then you put the global address from your hosting provider into the value field. To see which network and provider an address belongs to, try the IP lookup tool. That way you can make sure you did not copy the address of the wrong server.

What if the IPv6 test shows IPv4 only?

An IPv4 only verdict means your site has no valid AAAA record. That is not an outage; the site keeps working. Still, adding IPv6 takes little time on most hosting, and I suggest this order:

1. Get the address: find your server's IPv6 address in the hosting panel or ask your provider's support team.
2. Prepare the server: make sure the web server listens on ports 80 and 443 on that address. For Nginx, that means adding the IPv6 form of each listen line.
3. Add the records: enter the same AAAA value for the root and for www, or point www to the root with a CNAME.
4. Test again: once the TTL has expired, run this tool again.

Your SSL certificate needs no extra work, because it belongs to the domain name, not to the IP address. On the other hand, a proxy such as Cloudflare makes it even easier. According to the Cloudflare documentation, IPv6 compatibility is on by default for proxied records. If you are building a new site, adding these steps to the launch list of your web design project is the cleanest route.

Why is a broken AAAA record worse than none?

Modern browsers try IPv6 first when they connect to a site. RFC 8305 (Happy Eyeballs) recommends sending the AAAA query first and, as a default, waiting 250 milliseconds before starting the IPv4 attempt. Therefore, if the AAAA record exists but the server stays silent on IPv6, every new connection loses that delay.

For clients that do not implement this algorithm, the picture gets worse; they wait until the IPv6 attempt times out. In practice, these are the three causes I meet most often:

• Migration leftover: the site moves to a new server, you update the A record, but the old server's AAAA record stays.
• Automatic record: the hosting panel adds an AAAA record, but the web server never listens on IPv6.
• Wrong address: someone pastes a local address starting with fe80 or fd into the record.

This tool catches the last case in red on the Address type row. For the first two, open the site from an IPv6 connection after you read the report. If you want the bigger picture on speed, have a look at my article on how site speed affects SEO.

Does IPv6 support affect SEO and site speed?

As far as I know, Google has never announced IPv6 support as a ranking signal. Its guide to Google Search ranking systems does not list such a signal either. In other words, do not expect better rankings just because you added an AAAA record.

That said, IPv6 is completely normal on the crawling side. The IP range list that Google publishes for Googlebot contains IPv6 blocks next to the IPv4 ones. For that reason, if your firewall or bot rules only cover IPv4, update them when you switch IPv6 on.

To be honest, the speed gain from a correct IPv6 setup depends on the visitor's network. It does not create a measurable difference on every site. The real effect runs the other way: broken IPv6 adds delay to the connection. So treat IPv6 as a hygiene item on your technical SEO checklist. If you want your whole infrastructure reviewed with that mindset, we can look at it together as part of our SEO consulting.

What can an IPv6 test not see?

The tool reads DNS records only, so some problems stay invisible on the report card. Keep these limits in mind when you read the result:

• The server's real answer: the AAAA record may be correct, but the tool cannot know whether the web server listens on IPv6.
• Proxies and CDNs: if you use a service such as Cloudflare, the report shows the proxy's addresses, not your own server's.
• Other subdomains: the tool reads the root name and its www form. For example, if you type shop.example.com, the second row shows www.shop.example.com; you can ignore that row.
• Mail servers: find the host name in your MX record with the DNS lookup tool, then type it here separately.

If you are setting up business email, my guide to email on your own domain walks through the record layout step by step. In short, this tool is for the first diagnosis. For a lasting fix, handle the records together with the server settings.