Backup Server causing duplicate content flag?
-
Hi, Google is indexing pages from our backup server. Is this a duplicate content issue? There are essentially two versions of our entire domain indexed by Google. How do people typically handle this? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks, Yael
-
That's a great point -- I've been thinking about that. My only concern is that doing a conditional noindex, might send confusing messages to Google. What are your thoughts on this? Appreciate the help!
-
Maybe it wasn't clear from my response, but the new information that I posted in response to your answer was discovered AFTER I posted my question. Definitely appreciated the advice -- thanks for your time.
-
Use a variable that you can put true/false depending on if it's currently back up or not and change/show the no index based on that. Otherwise I'm going to agree with what Nigel is saying, don't ask for something if you can't fix it anyway.
-
I'm not really sure what you were expecting here. You have been given the obvious solution and now told the people who have given up their spare time to help you, that you can't implement anything!
Really what is the point???
-
Thanks for the answers!
For the time being, we unfortunately can't noindex because the backup site is used frequently. We need that to automatically kick in whenever the domain has problems. It looks like these pages are showing up externally because the server is hosted externally. Once we move to the cloud, this should no longer be an issue.
-
Hi yaelslater
I had this with my developer in the distant past. He put a copy of my website on another domain for 'development purposes'. Unbelievable that anyone could be so naive.It completely destroyed my website and all rankings dropped as yours must be doing now.
You must put a site-wide noindex on every page.
Regards
Nigel
-
Hi,
It would usually be best to exclude these kind of domains from a search engine to make sure they don't end up as becoming duplicate content.
Martijn.
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
-
How would you handle this duplicate content - noindex or canonical?
Hello Just trying look at how best to deal with this duplicated content. On our Canada holidays page we have a number of holidays listed (PAGE A)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/north-america/canada/suggested-holidays.aspx We also have a more specific Arctic Canada holidays page with different listings (PAGE B)
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/arctic-and-antarctica/arctic-canada/suggested-holidays.aspx Of the two, the Arctic Canada page (PAGE B) receives a far higher number of visitors from organic search. From a user perspective, people expect to see all holidays in Canada (PAGE A), including the Arctic based ones. We can tag these to appear on both, however it will mean that the PAGE B content will be duplicated on PAGE A. Would it be the best idea to set up a canonical link tag to stop this duplicate content causing an issue. Alternatively would it be best to no index PAGE A? Interested to see others thoughts. I've used this (Jan 2011 so quite old) article for reference in case anyone else enters this topic in search of information on a similar thing: Duplicate Content: Block, Redirect or Canonical - SEO Tips0 -
Duplicate Content Issues :(
I am wondering how we can solve our duplicate content issues. Here is the thing: There are so many ways you can write a description about a used watch. http://beckertime.com/product/mens-rolex-air-king-no-date-stainless-steel-watch-wsilver-dial-5500/ http://beckertime.com/product/mens-rolex-air-king-stainless-steel-date-watch-wblue-dial-5500/ Whats different between these two? The dial color. We have a lot of the same model numbers but with different conditions, dial colors, and bands.. What ideas do you have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KingRosales0 -
Duplicate content throughout multiple URLs dilemma
We have a website with lots of categories and there are problems that some subcategories have identical content on them. So, is it enough to just add different text on those problematic subcategories or we need to use "canonical" tag to main category. Same dilemma is with our search system and duplicate content. For example, "/category/sports" URL would have similar to identical content with "/search/sports" and "/search/sports-fitness/" URLs. Ranking factors is important for all different categories and subcategories. Ranking factors is also important for search individual keywords. So, the question is, how to make them somehow unique/different to rank on all those pages well? Would love to hear advices how it can be solved using different methods and how it would affect our rankings. When we actually need to use "canonical" tag and when 301 redirect is better. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | versliukai0 -
How To Handle Duplicate Content Regarding A Corp With Multiple Sites and Locations?
I have a client that has 800 locations. 50 of them are mine. The corporation has a standard website for their locations. The only thing different is their location info on each page. The majority of the content is the same for each website for each location. What can be done to minimize the impact/penalty of having "duplicate or near duplicate" content on their sites? Assuming corporate won't allow the pages to be altered.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JChronicle0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages
I'm getting a lot of duplicate content errors on my ecommerce site www.outdoormegastore.co.uk mainly centered around product pages. The products are completely different in terms of the title, meta data, product descriptions and images (with alt tags)but SEOmoz is still identifying them as duplicates and we've noticed a significant drop in google ranking lately. Admittedly the product descriptions are a little bit thin but I don't understand why the pages would be viewed as duplicates and therefore can be ranked lower? The content is definitely unique too. As an example these three pages have been identified as being duplicates of each other. http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/regatta-landtrek-25l-rucksack.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/canyon-bryce-adult-cycling-helmet-9045.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/outwell-minnesota-6-carpet-for-green-07-08-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
Guest blogging and duplicate content
I have a guest blog prepared and several sites I can submit it to, would it be considered duplicate content if I submitted one guest blog post to multipul blogs? and if so this content is not on my site but is linking to it. What will google do? Lets say 5 blogs except the same content and post it up, I understand that the first blog to have it up will not be punished, what about the rest of the blogs? can they get punished for this duplicate content? can I get punished for having duplicate content linking to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi everyone, I have a TLD in the UK with a .co.uk and also the same site in Ireland (.ie). The only differences are the prices and different banners maybe. The .ie site pulls all of the content from the .co.uk domain. Is this classed as content duplication? I've had problems in the past in which Google struggles to index the website. At the moment the site appears completely fine in the UK SERPs but for Ireland I just have the Title and domain appearing in the SERPs, with no extended title or description because of the confusion I caused Google last time. Does anybody know a fix for this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | royb0 -
Subdomains - duplicate content - robots.txt
Our corporate site provides MLS data to users, with the end goal of generating leads. Each registered lead is assigned to an agent, essentially in a round robin fashion. However we also give each agent a domain of their choosing that points to our corporate website. The domain can be whatever they want, but upon loading it is immediately directed to a subdomain. For example, www.agentsmith.com would be redirected to agentsmith.corporatedomain.com. Finally, any leads generated from agentsmith.easystreetrealty-indy.com are always assigned to Agent Smith instead of the agent pool (by parsing the current host name). In order to avoid being penalized for duplicate content, any page that is viewed on one of the agent subdomains always has a canonical link pointing to the corporate host name (www.corporatedomain.com). The only content difference between our corporate site and an agent subdomain is the phone number and contact email address where applicable. Two questions: Can/should we use robots.txt or robot meta tags to tell crawlers to ignore these subdomains, but obviously not the corporate domain? If question 1 is yes, would it be better for SEO to do that, or leave it how it is?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EasyStreet0