Multiply domains and duplicate content confusion
-
I've just found out that a client has multiple domains which are being indexed by google and so leading me to worry that they will be penalised for duplicate content. Wondered if anyone could confirm a) are we likely to be penalised? and b) what should we do about it? (i'm thinking just 301 redirect each domain to the main www.clientdomain.com...?).
Actual domain = www.clientdomain.com
But these also exist:
www.hostmastr.clientdomain.com
www.subscribers.clientdomain.com
ps I have NO idea how/why all these domains exist
I really appreciate any expertise on this issue, many thanks!
-
Fiona,
Just to be clear, what you're referring to are subdomains, and not domains. You're right, though, there are definitely issues related to duplicate content that is going to cause ranking problems. Typically, Google will rank the content that they crawled first: the others will be the duplicates.
The best way to deal with this is to decide which subdomain you really want: which will typically be www.clientdomain.com and then 301 redirect all of the others to www.clientdomain.com.
If, however, there is unique content on the other subdomains, then you wouldn't want to redirect those.
-
Depends on why the subdomains exist. If they're all carbon copies you might have an issue on your hands. If they're just various content, I wouldn't worry about it. Incidentally, some hosting programs (like Plesk, cPanel, etc.) will create a specific set of DNS entries for you automatically if you're not careful so that could be the source of some of this mess.
Should you consolidate domains? That depends. Are any of these subdomains penalized? Are they ranking better than your root site? Are they getting traffic? I would do your homework before consolidating. In some cases it might be better to just turn them off.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO effect of content duplication across hub of sites
Hello, I have a question about a website I have been asked to work on. It is for a real estate company which is part of a larger company. Along with several other (rival) companies it has a website of property listings which receives a feed of properties from a central hub site - so lots of potential for page, title and meta content duplication (if if isn't already occuring) across the whole network of sites. In early investigation I don't see any of these sites ranking very well at all in Google for expected search phrases. Before I start working on things that might improve their rankings, I wanted to ask some questions from you guys: 1. How would such duplication (if it is occuring) effect the SEO rankings of such sites individually, or the whole network/hub collectively? 2. Is it possible to tell if such a site has been "burnt" for SEO purposes, especially if or from any duplication? 3. If such a site or the network has been totally burnt, are there any approaches or remedies that can be made to improve the site's SEO rankings significantly, or is the only/best option to start again from scratch with a brand new site, ensuring the use of new meta descriptions and unique content? Thanks in advance, Graham
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gmwhite9991 -
Duplicate content question
Hi there, I work for a Theater news site. We have an issue where our system creates a chunk of duplicate content in Google's eyes and we're not sure how best to solve. When an editor produces a video, it simultaneously 1) creates a page with it's own static URL (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/video/mary-louise-parker-tommy-tune-laura-osnes-and-more_668.html); and 2) displays said video on a public index page (http://www.theatermania.com/videos/). Since the content is very similar, Google sees them as duplicate. What should we do about this? We were thinking that one solution would to be dynamically canonicalize the index page to the static page whenever a new video is posted, but would Google frown on this? Alternatively, should we simply nofollow the index page? Lastly, are there any solutions we may have missed entirely?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Same content pages in different versions of Google - is it duplicate>
Here's my issue I have the same page twice for content but on different url for the country, for example: www.example.com/gb/page/ and www.example.com/us/page So one for USA and one for Great Britain. Or it could be a subdomain gb. or us. etc. Now is it duplicate content is US version indexes the page and UK indexes other page (same content different url), the UK search engine will only see the UK page and the US the us page, different urls but same content. Is this bad for the panda update? or does this get away with it? People suggest it is ok and good for localised search for an international website - im not so sure. Really appreciate advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page
Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension. so they indexed www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's www.samplepage.com/page.html How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension? I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler0 -
Hit by Penguin, Can I move the content from the old site to a new domain and start again with the same content which is high quality
I need some advice please. My website got the unnatural links detected message and was hit by penguin.. hard. Can I move the content from the current domain to a new domain and start again or does the content need to be redone also. I will obviously turn of the old domain once its moved. The other option is to try and identify the bad links and change my anchor profile which is a hit and miss task in my opinion. Would it not be easier just to identify the good links pointing to the old domain and get those changed to point to the new domain with better anchors. thanks Warren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | warren0071 -
Multiple cities/regions websites - duplicate content?
We're about to launch a second site for a different, neighbouring city in which we are going to setup a marketing campaign to target sales in that city (which will also have a separate office there as well). We are going to have it under the same company name, but different domain name and we're going to do our best to re-write the text content as much as possible. We want to avoid Google seeing this as a duplicate site in any way, but what about: the business name the toll free number (which we would like to have same on both sites) the graphics/image files (which we would like to have the same on both sites) site structure, coding styles, other "forensic" items anything I might not be thinking of... How are we best to proceed with this? What about cross-linking the sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webdesignbarrie0 -
Duplicate content that looks unique
OK, bit of an odd one. The SEOmoz crawler has flagged the following pages up as duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/blog/november-2011/gear$9zone-guide-to-winter-insulation http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/blog/september-2011/win-a-the-north-face-nuptse-2-jacket-with-gear-zone http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/blog/july-2011/telephone-issues-$9-2nd-july-2011 http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/blog/september-2011/gear$9zone-guide-to-nordic-walking-poles http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/blog/september-2011/win-a-the-north-face-nuptse-2-jacket-with-gear-zone https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/googlebot-fetch?hl=en&siteUrl=http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
"Duplicate" Page Titles and Content
Hi All, This is a rather lengthy one, so please bear with me! SEOmoz has recently crawled 10,000 webpages from my site, FrenchEntree, and has returned 8,000 errors of duplicate page content. The main reason I have so many is because of the directories I have on site. The site is broken down into 2 levels of hierachy. "Weblets" and "Articles". A weblet is a landing page, and articles are created within these weblets. Weblets can hold any number of articles - 0 - 1,000,000 (in theory) and an article must be assigned to a weblet in order for it to work. Here's how it roughly looks in URL form - http://www.mysite.com/[weblet]/[articleID]/ Now; our directory results pages are weblets with standard content in the left and right hand columns, but the information in the middle column is pulled in from our directory database following a user query. This happens by adding the query string to the end of the URL. We have 3 main directory databases, but perhaps around 100 weblets promoting various 'canned' queries that users may want to navigate straight into. However, any one of the 100 directory promoting weblets could return any query from the parent directory database with the correct query string. The problem with this method (as pointed out by the 8,000 errors) is that each possible permutation of search is considered to be it's own URL, and therefore, it's own page. The example I will use is the first alphabetically. "Activity Holidays in France": http://www.frenchentree.com/activity-holidays-france/ - This link shows you a results weblet without the query at the end, and therefore only displays the left and right hand columns as populated. http://www.frenchentree.com/activity-holidays-france/home.asp?CategoryFilter= - This link shows you the same weblet with the an 'open' query on the end. I.e. display all results from this database. Listings are displayed in the middle. There are around 500 different URL permutations for this weblet alone when you take into account the various categories and cities a user may want to search in. What I'd like to do is to prevent SEOmoz (and therefore search engines) from counting each individual query permutation as a unique page, without harming the visibility that the directory results received in SERPs. We often appear in the top 5 for quite competitive keywords and we'd like it to stay that way. I also wouldn't want the search engine results to only display (and therefore direct the user through to) an empty weblet by some sort of robot exclusion or canonical classification. Does anyone have any advice on how best to remove the "duplication" problem, whilst keeping the search visibility? All advice welcome. Thanks Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon0