undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Let your business shine with Listings AI
    Moz Local

    Let your business shine with Listings AI

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Duplicate content due to parked domains

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Duplicate content due to parked domains

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
2
7
2.1k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • ajiabs
    ajiabs Subscriber last edited by Jan 6, 2016, 1:33 PM

    I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names.  So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues.

    12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website

    1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address

    2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates?

    3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects.

    4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index

    5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content.

    Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere.

    Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Dr-Pete
      Dr-Pete Staff @ajiabs last edited by Jan 17, 2016, 6:03 PM Jan 17, 2016, 6:02 PM

      Oh, wow - if you're talking a couple of years ago and major ranking drops, then definitely get aggressive. Remove as many as possible and Robots No-index them. If you've got the Robots.txt directives in place, Google shouldn't put them back (although, from past experience, I realize "shouldn't" isn't a guarantee). If you're down 90%, you've got very little to lose and clearly Google didn't like something about that set-up.

      Unfortunately, that's about the most drastic, reasonable option. The next step would be to start over with a fresh domain and kill all of the old domains. That could be a lot more hazardous, though.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ajiabs
        ajiabs Subscriber @Dr-Pete last edited by Jan 14, 2016, 8:29 PM Jan 14, 2016, 8:29 PM

        Thank you Dr. Peter.

        Couple of years ago my search engine positions tanked by around 90% and have not picked up back yet. At that time assumed it was due to the duplicate content on these domains, as they were parked ( Not 301, just domain masking) at that point. To avoid that duplicate content problem I moved to 301 redirection.  None of these domains have any link juice to speak. Some domains have some typein traffic. I was just trying to capture them rather than link jiuice.

        I did de-index most of the domains from webmaster tools in the past. But Google put them back, after 90 days or so. 301 redirection in place did not help that much.

        If Google thinks there is a chance of abuse of the 301 of new domains, I would start removing the new domains completely and point else where so that Google can have some new content.
        Thank youAji Abraham

        Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Jan 17, 2016, 6:02 PM Reply Quote 0
        • Dr-Pete
          Dr-Pete Staff @ajiabs last edited by Jan 12, 2016, 9:11 PM Jan 12, 2016, 9:11 PM

          Ugh... 75 is a chunk. The problem is that Google isn't a huge fan of 301-redirecting a bunch of new domains, because it's been too often abused in the past by people buying up domains with history and trying to consolidate PageRank. So, it's possible that (1) they're suspicious of these domains, or (2) they're just not crawling/caching them in a timely manner, since they used to be parked.

          Personally, unless there's any link value at all to these, I'd consider completely de-indexing the duplicate domains - at this point that probably does mean removal in Google Search Console and adding Robots.txt (which might be a prerequisite of removal, but I can't recall).

          Otherwise, your only real option is just to give the 301-redirects time. It may be a non-issue, and Google is just taking its time. Ultimately, the question is whether these are somehow harming the parent site. If Google is just indexing a few pages but you're not being harmed, I might leave it alone and let the 301s do their work over time. I checked some headers, and they seem to be set up properly.

          If you're seeing harm or the wrong domains being returned in search, and if no one is linking to those other domains, then I'd probably be more aggressive and go for all-out removal.

          ajiabs 1 Reply Last reply Jan 14, 2016, 8:29 PM Reply Quote 1
          • ajiabs
            ajiabs Subscriber last edited by Jan 8, 2016, 3:25 AM Jan 8, 2016, 3:25 AM

            Hello Dr.Peter

            Thank you for helping out.

            There are around 75 or so domains pointing to the main website. When they were parked (prior to November 2014) on the main site, they were added as additional domains, which were url masked. So at least 30 domains were indexed in google with same content as main content.

            12 months back, I realized the duplicate content error and changed the domain parking to 301 redirects. Also used ‘remove url’ functionality in Google Webmaster tools. Even after 12 months, I noticed a number of domains had duplicate contents in google index.  
            This I removed the pages from the addon domains again using google webmaster tools.

            To give you an idea my main site with original content/links is iscripts.com and an addon domain socialappster.com is pointed to a product page at iscripts.com/socialware. If you do a site: socialappster.com in google you find few pages in google index, even though it is 301 redirect for more than 12 months now. Similar issue with other domains pointing to product pages as well as whole site.

            Appreciate any direction you can provide to clean this mess.

            Thanks

            Aji Abraham

            Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Jan 12, 2016, 9:11 PM Reply Quote 1
            • Dr-Pete
              Dr-Pete Staff last edited by Jan 7, 2016, 5:59 PM Jan 7, 2016, 5:59 PM

              Oh, and how many domains are we talking (ballpark)?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Dr-Pete
                Dr-Pete Staff last edited by Jan 7, 2016, 5:58 PM Jan 7, 2016, 5:58 PM

                What was happening when they were parked - were they 302-redirected or was it some kind of straight CNAME situation where, theoretically, Google shouldn't have even seen the parked domains? Trick, of course, is that Google is a registrar, so they can see a lot that isn't necessarily public or crawlable.

                Did the additional domains get indexed while parked, or after you went to 301-redirects?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • davidifaso

                  Migrating Subfolder content to New domain Safely

                  migration seo ranking

                  Hello everyone, I'm currently facing a challenging situation and would greatly appreciate your expertise and guidance. I own a website, maniflexa.com, primarily focused on the digital agency niche. About 3 months ago, I created a subfolder, maniflexa.com/emploi/, dedicated to job listings which is a completely different niche. The subfolder has around 120 posts and pages. Unfortunately, since I created the subfolder, the rankings of my main site have been negatively impacted. I was previously ranking #1 for all local digital services keywords, but now, only 2 out of 16 keywords have maintained their positions. Other pages have dropped to positions 30 and beyond. I'm considering a solution and would like your advice: I'm planning to purchase a new domain and migrate the content from maniflexa.com/emploi/ to newdomain.com. However, I want to ensure a smooth migration without affecting the main domain maniflexa.com rankings and losing backlinks from maniflexa.com/emploi/ pages. Is moving the subfolder content to a new domain a viable solution? And how can I effectively redirect all pages from the subfolder to the new domain while preserving page ranks and backlinks?
                  I wish they did, but GSC doesn't offer a solution to migration content from subfolder to a new domain. 😢 Help a fellow Mozer. Thanks for giving a hand.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 19, 2023, 7:43 PM | davidifaso
                  0
                • yacpro13

                  Duplicate content on URL trailing slash

                  Hello, Some time ago, we accidentally made changes to our site which modified the way urls in links are generated. At once, trailing slashes were added to many urls (only in links). Links that used to send to
                  example.com/webpage.html Were now linking to
                  example.com/webpage.html/ Urls in the xml sitemap remained unchanged (no trailing slash). We started noticing duplicate content (because our site renders the same page with or without the trailing shash). We corrected the problematic php url function so that now, all links on the site link to a url without trailing slash. However, Google had time to index these pages. Is implementing 301 redirects required in this case?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 26, 2016, 7:42 PM | yacpro13
                  1
                • techdesign

                  Two Different Domains exact same content

                  Hello, I suspect I know the answer to this but would like to have it confirmed. I have been speaking to a company the last couple of weeks who have 2 domains with the exact same content. Possible a third but they haven't supplied a link. This from all I've read would be a huge problem for ranking and SEO. What would be the best way to deal with this ? I did do a search and found articles/questions on same content on the same site and in articles etc but nothing about exactly the same websites on 2 domains. Cheers David.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 17, 2015, 11:27 PM | techdesign
                  0
                • MBASydney

                  Duplicate content on sites from different countries

                  Hi, we have a client who currently has a lot of duplicate content with their UK and US website. Both websites are geographically targeted (via google webmaster tools) to their specific location and have the appropriate local domain extension. Is having duplicate content a major issue, since they are in two different countries and geographic regions of the world? Any statement from Google about this? Regards, Bill

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 1, 2013, 11:08 AM | MBASydney
                  0
                • team_tic

                  International SEO - cannibalisation and duplicate content

                  Hello all, I look after (in house) 3 domains for one niche travel business across three TLDs: .com .com.au and co.uk and a fourth domain on a co.nz TLD which was recently removed from Googles index. Symptoms: For the past 12 months we have been experiencing canibalisation in the SERPs (namely .com.au being rendered in .com) and Panda related ranking devaluations between our .com site and com.au site. Around 12 months ago the .com TLD was hit hard (80% drop in target KWs) by Panda (probably) and we began to action the below changes. Around 6 weeks ago our .com TLD saw big overnight increases in rankings (to date a 70% averaged increase). However, almost to the same percentage we saw in the .com TLD we suffered significant  drops in our .com.au rankings. Basically Google seemed to switch its attention from .com TLD to the .com.au TLD. Note: Each TLD is over 6 years old, we've never proactively gone after links (Penguin) and have always aimed for quality in an often spammy industry. **Have done: ** Adding HREF LANG markup to all pages on all domain Each TLD uses local vernacular e.g for the .com site is American Each TLD has pricing in the regional currency Each TLD has details of the respective local offices, the copy references the lacation, we have significant press coverage in each country like The Guardian for our .co.uk site and Sydney Morning Herlad for our Australia site Targeting each site to its respective market in WMT Each TLDs core-pages (within 3 clicks of the primary nav) are 100% unique We're continuing to re-write and publish unique content to each TLD on a weekly basis As the .co.nz site drove such little traffic re-wrting we added no-idex and the TLD has almost compelte dissapread (16% of pages remain) from the SERPs. XML sitemaps Google + profile for each TLD **Have not done: ** Hosted each TLD on a local server Around 600 pages per TLD are duplicated across all TLDs (roughly 50% of all content). These are way down the IA but still duplicated. Images/video sources from local servers Added address and contact details using SCHEMA markup Any help, advice or just validation on this subject would be appreciated! Kian

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 23, 2013, 9:39 PM | team_tic
                  1
                • Byron_W

                  Duplicate Content on Wordpress b/c of Pagination

                  On my recent crawl, there were a great many duplicate content penalties.  The site is http://dailyfantasybaseball.org. The issue is: There's only one post per page.  Therefore, because of wordpress's (or genesis's) pagination, a page gets created for every post, thereby leaving basically every piece of content i write as a duplicate. I feel like the engines should be smart enough to figure out what's going on, but if not, I will get hammered. What should I do moving forward? Thanks!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 28, 2012, 1:40 PM | Byron_W
                  0
                • WSOT

                  How get rid of duplicate content, titles, etc on php cartweaver site?

                  my website http://www.bartramgallery.com was created using php and cartweaver  2.0 about five years ago by a web developer.  I was really happy with the results of the design was inspired to get into web development and have been studying ever since.  My biggest problem at this time is that I am not knowledgable with php and the cartweaver product but am learning as I read more.  The issue is that seomoz tools are reporting tons of duplicate content and duplicate title pages etc.  This is likely from the dynamic urls and same pages with secondary results etc.  I just made a new sitemap with auditmypc I think it was called in an attempt to get rid of all the duplicate page titles but is that going to solve anything or do I need to find another way to configure the site?  There are many pages with the same content competing for page rank and it is a bit frustrating to say the least.  If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated even pointing me in the right direction. Thank you, Jesse

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 29, 2011, 12:17 AM | WSOT
                  0
                • djo-283669

                  Concerns about duplicate content issues with australian and us version of website

                  My company has an ecommerce website that's been online for about 5 years.  The url is www.betterbraces.com.  We're getting ready to launch an australian version of the website and the url will be www.betterbraces.com.au. The australian website will have the same look as the US website and will contain about 200 of the same products that are featured on the US website.  The only major difference between the two websites is the price that is charged for the products.  The australian website will be hosted on the same server as the US website. To ensure Australians don't purchase from the US site we are going to have a geo redirect in place that sends anyone with a AU ip address to the australian website. I am concerned that the australian website is going to have duplicate content issues.  However, I'm not sure if the fact that the domains are so similar coupled with the redirect will help the search engines understand that these sites are related. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to handle this situation to ensure oue rankings in the search engines aren't penalized. Thanks in advance for your help. Alison French

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 17, 2011, 12:44 PM | djo-283669
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.