Non primary domain ranking higher in searches
-
Hey Guys,
Hopefully I can explain this so that you can understand, let me know if you need me to clarify any particular points.
I have a primary domain for my website, however someone has also pointed their domain at my server that has nothing to do with us or our website.
Typing a keyword in a search engine will list our website as this has been crawled but it's listing the domain as their domain and not our primary.
Is this because their domain has greater value then our primary?
What's the best course of action to resolve the issue?
The reason I ask is because the domain could potentially have a negative effect on business.
If I setup hosting for this second domain and setup a redirect on it, all the traffic that is trying to reach us via respective search terms are then directed away from our site.
I have been in contact with the domain administrator but they are yet to reply to my correspondence.
Has anyone experienced something similar and come up with a good way to resolve it?
Thanks guys, any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
Very in-depth response so thanks for this.
I will see how quickly Google reindexes my proper site now that I have a redirect in place for that not so wanted domain.
I will also send another 'calm' e-mail to the domain owner to see if I can get them to respond and point it away from my server.
Thanks again!
-
Unfortunately, this might possibly an attempt by a spammer at what is called a 302 hijacking. Google says 302 hijackings haven't worked in years, but many webmasters disagree wholeheartedly.
(on the other hand, it might not be this at all)
Basically, a spammer points a temporary redirect (check the redirection through a tool like URI Valet to see if it's a 302). Often if the site has a slightly higher authority, it can fool the search engines into hijacking your traffic. A deeper explanation here.
Another possibility is that your site has been hacked. Check for spyware, check Webmaster Tools and check to make sure that your domain is not the one being redirected. In Webmaster Tools make sure there hasn't been a change of address, and do a fetch as Googlebot to make sure your pages show up correctly.
Finally, you can fight back.
- Contact the offenders hosting company and let them know
- (a scary letter from a lawyer might help
- File a spam report with Google
- Post the issue on Webmaster Central
If it is an actual 302 hijacking, Google should take care of it fairly quickly.
Often, these aren't 302 hijackings at all, but are caused by internal site issues. Do a thorough site audit first before taking further steps.
-
as I thought too advanced for me someone will answer soon. have these people done some kind of dodgy technique to steal your traffic
-
Hi,
To clarify:-
- Someone has a domain pointed at my server, the servers default site is my website.
- You type in a search term for my website, it lists their domain and not mine.
I have since added a redirect on my server for that domain but now I am losing traffic.
Very annoying!
-
I think you need to clarify what does someone has pointed their domain at my server mean?
if I setup hosting for this second domain and setup a redirect on it, all the traffic that is trying to reach us via respective search terms are then directed away from our site
how can you do this if its not your domain?
I dont think I could answer if i understood but i will watch and learn when someone does answer
Good luck
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
-
Changed domains, saw significant drop in domain authority
Hello, A little over a month ago we switched our domain from A to B. The original was .com and the new one is at a .tech for good measure. We have meticulously done 301 redirects page by page but there has been a massive drop in traffic and I checked here to see that we've gone from a 30 domain authority to a 9. The company is a few months over 1 year old, but we're really looking at traffic accumulated in just about 8 months for the old domain. Is there any way to recover some of the old juice in this one other than the re-directs? Our number of backlinks have also severely dropped despite re-directs.
Technical SEO | | SteveSaf0 -
Merge 2 websites into one, using a non-existing, new domain.
I need to merge https://www.WebsiteA.com and https://www.WebsiteB.com to a fresh new domain (with no content) https://www.WebsiteC.com. I want to do it the best way to keep existing SEO juice. Website A is the companies home page and built with Wordpress Website B is the company product page and built with Wordpress Website C will be the new site containing both website A and B, utilizing Wordpress also. What is the best way to do this? I have research a lot and keep hitting walls on how to do it. It's a little trickier because it's two different domains going to a brand new domain. Thanks
Technical SEO | | jarydcat10 -
Buying a domain to 301 redirect for increased rankings
A large competitor has recently purchased a large marketing company that specializes in their industry. As a part of this acquisition they obtained ownership of www.digitalsherpa.com, which is now 301 redirecting some 50K links to www.costar.com/. When I did a site:www.digitalsherpa.com search all of the origin URLs had title tags from the costar site in place of their own. My question is: Does this violate Google spam guidelines? search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Adigitalsherpa.com&oq=site&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i65j69i60j0l2.1919j0j7
Technical SEO | | Reis_Inc.0 -
Domain name SEO
I would like to hear your opinion about which between robotics.kawasaki.com and www.kawasakirobotics.com is more effective for SEO of keyword robotics and kawasaki. We have been using kawasaki.com domain name for more than 15 years.
Technical SEO | | Iwashima0 -
Should a 301 from a penalised domain to a new domain be removed?
A business traded on a domain let's say example.COM which was heavily penalised due to non-removable spammy back links. Their previous SEO advised them to set up on example.CO.UK but redirected example.COM to example.CO.UK. Example.CO.UK ranks very poorly, presumably due to being 'tarred with the same brush' i.e. attributed with the ills of example.COM. Will it do any good to remove the redirect or is example.CO.UK now doomed as well?
Technical SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy1 -
Umlaut in domain
Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | media-surfer
Jason.0 -
Why is this site ranking so good?
Site in question: http://bit.ly/aBvVbm Our main competitor in the UK seems to be ranking extremely good for the keyword "jigsaw puzzles" even though their linking profile doesn't seem all that great? They mainly have site-wide links on 2 of their other ecommerce sites which seem to be given them their ranking power as this equals to 100's of links. Does sitewide links on 2 sites really give this much ranking power or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | Tonyy30 -
Sub Domains
Hi,,, Okay we have 1 main site , a few years back we went down the road of sub domains and generated about 10. They have page rank and age but we wish to move them back to the main web site. What is the correct or best way to achieve this. 1 copy all content to the main web site creating dup pages and then use a redirects from the sub pages to the new dup pages on the main domain... or 2 write new content on the main domain for the subdomain pages and redirect to the new content. Problem with 2 is the amount of work involved...
Technical SEO | | NotThatFast0