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  4. Domain Masking SEO Impact

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Domain Masking SEO Impact

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  • SamaritansPurse
    SamaritansPurse Subscriber last edited by Feb 13, 2019, 7:00 PM

    I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • effectdigital
      effectdigital @SamaritansPurse last edited by Feb 18, 2019, 9:38 AM Feb 18, 2019, 9:38 AM

      Glad to be of service! 🙂

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • SamaritansPurse
        SamaritansPurse Subscriber @effectdigital last edited by Feb 15, 2019, 4:18 PM Feb 15, 2019, 4:18 PM

        Thank you for this response. This helps me a ton as I discuss with our web team on the best way to set the coding for the site so that we are not registering errors but also not hurting the actual site in any way.

        effectdigital 1 Reply Last reply Feb 18, 2019, 9:38 AM Reply Quote 1
        • effectdigital
          effectdigital @WebMarkets last edited by Feb 14, 2019, 1:04 PM Feb 14, 2019, 1:04 PM

          This is a good idea, but Robots.txt stops pages being crawled - it doesn't stop pages being indexed. For that you need to fire the Meta No-Index directive on the affected URLs. If you can't edit their code you can fire the same directive through the HTTP header via X-Robots. On that linked post, you'll need to scroll down a little. If possible you could also alter those URLs to serve status code 410 (gone) so that Google knows, those URLs aren't really on your site

          Note that you'll need to make the changes on the 'affected' site, not the site which is the 'source' of the masked pages / data. If you make the changes there, that site will have all the Google traffic killed as well (and they'll probably want to punch you!)

          I recommend that you lead with hard signals and directives which stop Google indexing the pages on the 'affected' site (which is receiving the masked URLs / content and doesn't want them to rank). Once the pages fall out of Google's index, then you swoop in behind and put the robots.txt stuff in to stop them ever coming back

          SamaritansPurse 1 Reply Last reply Feb 15, 2019, 4:18 PM Reply Quote 0
          • WebMarkets
            WebMarkets last edited by Feb 13, 2019, 7:07 PM Feb 13, 2019, 7:07 PM

            Depends on the CMS you use. Many CMS's can click a quick button to not index in Google search.

            If that isnt an option, do it through a robots.txt file in webmaster tools.

            effectdigital 1 Reply Last reply Feb 14, 2019, 1:04 PM Reply Quote 1
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