Development site accidentally got indexed and now appears in SERPs. How to fix?
-
I work at a design firm, and we just redesigned a website for a client. When it came time for the coding, we initially built a development site to work out all the kinks before going live. Then we relaunched the actual site about a week ago.
Here's the problem: Somehow, the developer who coded the site for us (a freelancer) allowed the development site to be indexed by Google.
Now, when you enter the client's name into Google, the development site appears higher in the results pages than the real site! In fact, the real site isn't even in the top 50 search results. The client is understandably angry about this for multiple reasons.
We quickly added a robots.txt file to the development site and a 301 redirect to the real site. However, that did seemed to have no effect on the problem.
Any ideas on how to fix this mess? Thank you in advance!
-
For the future, I'd suggest using something like Code Monitor (https://polepositionweb.com/roi/codemonitor/index.php) to monitor for any changes to your live or staging robots.txt. I've been in situations where too many people had access to the site that didn't know what they were doing, and getting an alert within 24 hours that someone changed something in robots.txt really saved us.
-
This exact same thing happened to me. I wasn't aware of the remove URL tool that others have suggested, so if it helps I'll tell you what I did. I simply added a rel=canonical tag from the development site to the new one. Then, once the new one had regained its SERP I deleted the development site. That way, I was sure that the client's site would have good positions.
-
Both nailed it spot on. Thats the way to go.
-
Use Google Webmaster tools. Under Site Configuration > Crawler Access, there is a "Remove URL" tab that will allow you to request URLs be removed from Google's index.
-
Hi Matt
Through Google Webmaster Tools, you can request that the whole website (the development site) be removed from Google's index. Could speed up the removal process by doing so.
Regards
Simon
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
My brand name has 2 words but Google only indexing as 1 word. Is there a fix?
Hi all...I'm at a loss. I've never had this happen. Google only shows pages of my site when I search the brand name as one word. When I Google the site as one word BrandBrand- it only shows my blog page and about us page plus Twitter and Facebook on page 1. The homepage does not show up at all. When I Google the site as two words Brand Brand - My Facebook page is on page 1 but nothing else. The homepage isn't showing up at all. When I search both words on Bing and Yahoo both are indexing it as two words and shows on page 1. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | TexasBlogger0 -
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
Recently re-built our site and changed domain. Now I want to go back to old domain - it it a bad idea?
About a year ago I rebuilt our website and changed our domain name. We rent villas in Tuscany, we used to be 'invitationtotuscany.com'. Then I started doing the same in Provence, and in the italian lakes, so i had further sites called invitationtoprovence.com and invitationtotheitalianlakes.com. But maintaining them was awkward and I wanted to have one site. So I put them all onto invitationto.com and did 301s from the old domains and sites. Now I'd dropped off organic search results and I've also realised that invitationto.com is far less clear as a business address. My inclination is to go back to invitationtotuscany.com - Tuscany is still 80% of our business and have the other areas in there too - optimised for SEO for Provence etc. I'm being told its a really bad idea to change domain, 301 the old one, and then revert to the original domain. But I'm suffering anyway, so I wonder if I sjhouldn't just bite the bullet. A lot of my old good backlinks still point to invitationtotuscany.com (BBC, Sunday Times, etc) and the DA is 33 against 22 on the new one.. All help gratefully received! : )
Technical SEO | | DanWrightson0 -
Site indexed by Google, but (almost) never gets impressions
Hi there, I have a question that I wasn't able to give it a reasonable answer yet, so I'm going to trust on all of you. Basically a site has all its pages indexed by Google (I verified with site:sitename.com) and it also has great and unique content. All on-page grades are A with absolutely no negative factors at all. However its pages do not get impressions almost at all. Of course I didn't expect it to be on page 1 since it has been launched on Dec, 1st, but it looks like Google is ignoring (or giving it bad scores) for some reason. Only things that can contribute to that could be: domain privacy on the domain, redirect from the www to the subdomain we use (we did this because it will be a multi-language site, so we'll assign to each country a subdomain), recency (it has been put online on Dec 1st and the domain is just a couple of months old). Or maybe because we blocked crawlers for a few days before the launch? Exactly a few days before Dec 1st. What do you think? What could be the reason for that? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | ruggero0 -
How to determine which pages are not indexed
Is there a way to determine which pages of a website are not being indexed by the search engines? I know Google Webmasters has a sitemap area where it tells you how many urls have been submitted and how many are indexed out of those submitted. However, it doesn't necessarily show which urls aren't being indexed.
Technical SEO | | priceseo1 -
Can you help with some concerns over mobile site in SERPS
Hi Guys I wonder if you can put me right on this query please? We have a mobile version of our site, on an m. domain. it is actually http://m.uniquemagazines.co.uk. I have created a mobile sitemap, and added the sitemap reference to the robots.txt file. I have setup the site in web master tools, and submitted the sitemap to web master tools. The sitemap can be found at http://m.uniquemagazines.co.uk/sitemap.xml. This is an index file, which in turn links to 3 sitemaps, one for pages, one for product pages and one for category pages. I have not blocked any crawlers in the robots.txt file. My query is we have some products showing up in the SERPS with both the mobile and normal website. Secondly, in web master tools I am told that our mobile sitemap contains 3675 submitted URLs. However, it states under the WEB banner that 3675 submitted, and 3675 indexed. But under MOBILE it states 3675 submitted, none indexed... I will attempt to attach a screenshot from WMT of this. Do you have any ideas what has gone wrong here? is it wrong, or is this what you would expect to see? Many thanks Paul ScreenHunter_18%20Feb.%2021%2010.55.jpg
Technical SEO | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
How do we ensure our new dynamic site gets indexed?
Just wondering if you can point me in the right direction. We're building a 'dynamically generated' website, so basically, pages don’t technically exist until the visitor types in the URL (or clicks an on page link), the pages are then created on the fly for the visitor. The major concern I’ve got is that Google won’t be able to index the site, as the pages don't exist until they're 'visited', and to top it off, they're rendered in JSPX, which makes things tricky to ensure the bots can view the content We’re going to build/submit a sitemap.xml to signpost the site for Googlebot but are there any other options/resources/best practices Mozzers could recommend for ensuring our new dynamic website gets indexed?
Technical SEO | | Hutch_e0 -
How to move a site slowly
I've got a site that I started back in 2001 (www.jaaroncaststone.com) to sell what I was making, concrete countertops and sinks. Well we're going to be discontinuing the concrete products in a month or so and want to start pointing all the links from the old site to a new one dedicated to a single product (www.jaaron-wood-countertops.com). I don't want to do a full 301 on the old site just yet but can I put a canonical tag on the index and about us pages pointing to the new site now so the search engines start looking that way or should I wait and do a full 301 when the day comes to pull the old site?
Technical SEO | | JAARON0