Multiply domains and duplicate content confusion
-
I've just found out that a client has multiple domains which are being indexed by google and so leading me to worry that they will be penalised for duplicate content. Wondered if anyone could confirm a) are we likely to be penalised? and b) what should we do about it? (i'm thinking just 301 redirect each domain to the main www.clientdomain.com...?).
Actual domain = www.clientdomain.com
But these also exist:
www.hostmastr.clientdomain.com
www.subscribers.clientdomain.com
ps I have NO idea how/why all these domains exist
I really appreciate any expertise on this issue, many thanks!
-
Fiona,
Just to be clear, what you're referring to are subdomains, and not domains. You're right, though, there are definitely issues related to duplicate content that is going to cause ranking problems. Typically, Google will rank the content that they crawled first: the others will be the duplicates.
The best way to deal with this is to decide which subdomain you really want: which will typically be www.clientdomain.com and then 301 redirect all of the others to www.clientdomain.com.
If, however, there is unique content on the other subdomains, then you wouldn't want to redirect those.
-
Depends on why the subdomains exist. If they're all carbon copies you might have an issue on your hands. If they're just various content, I wouldn't worry about it. Incidentally, some hosting programs (like Plesk, cPanel, etc.) will create a specific set of DNS entries for you automatically if you're not careful so that could be the source of some of this mess.
Should you consolidate domains? That depends. Are any of these subdomains penalized? Are they ranking better than your root site? Are they getting traffic? I would do your homework before consolidating. In some cases it might be better to just turn them off.
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 do we avoid duplicate/thin content on +150,000 product pages?
Hey guys! We got a rather large product range (books) on our eCommerce site (+150,000 titles). We get book descriptions as meta data from our publishers, which we display on the product pages. This obviously is not unique, as many other sites display the same piece of description of the book. It is important for us to rank on those book titles, so my question to You is: How would you go about it? I mean, it seems like a rather unrealistic task to paraphrase +150,000 (and growing) book descriptions. As I see it, there are these options: 1. Don't display the descriptions on the product pages (however then those pages will get even thinner!)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacob_Holm
2. Display the (duplicate) descriptions, but put no-index on those product pages in order not to punish the rest of the site (not really an option, though).
3. Hire student workers to produce unique product descriptions for all 150,000 products (seems like a huge and expensive task) But how would You solve such a challenge?
Thanks a lot! Cheers, Tommy.0 -
Duplicate content on product pages
Hi, We are considering the impact when you want to deliver content directly on the product pages. If the products were manufactured in a specific way and its the same process across 100 other products you might want to tell your readers about it. If you were to believe the product page was the best place to deliver this information for your readers then you could potentially be creating mass content duplication. Especially as the storytelling of the product could equate to 60% of the page content this could really flag as duplication. Our options would appear to be:1. Instead add the content as a link on each product page to one centralised URL and risk taking users away from the product page (not going to help with conversion rate or designers plans)2. Put the content behind some javascript which requires interaction hopefully deterring the search engine from crawling the content (doesn't fit the designers plans & users have to interact which is a big ask)3. Assign one product as a canonical and risk the other products not appearing in search for relevant searches4. Leave the copy as crawlable and risk being marked down or de-indexed for duplicated contentIts seems the search engines do not offer a way for us to serve this great content to our readers with out being at risk of going against guidelines or the search engines not being able to crawl it.How would you suggest a site should go about this for optimal results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux2 -
Duplicate Page Content Issues Reported in Moz Crawl Report
Hi all, We have a lot of 'Duplicate Page Content' issues being reported on the Moz Crawl Report and I am trying to 'get to the bottom' of why they are deemed as errors... This page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/about-us/job-opportunities/ has (admittedly) very little content and is duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/explorer-of-the-seas-2015/ This page is basically an image and has just a couple of lines of static content. Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-lines/costa-cruises/costa-voyager/ This page relates to a single cruise ship and again has minimal content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/faq/packing/ This is an FAQ page again with only a few lines of content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/exclusive-canada-&-alaska-cruisetour/ Another page that just features an image and NO content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/free-upgrades-on-cunard-2014-&-2015/?page_number=6 A cruise deals page that has a little bit of static content and a lot of dynamic content (which I suspect isn't crawled) So my question is, is the duplicate content issued caused by the fact that each page has 'thin' or no content? If that is the case then I assume the simple fix is to increase add \ increase the content? I realise that I may have answered my own question but my brain is 'pickled' at the moment and so I guess I am just seeking assurances! 🙂 Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
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 | | team_tic1 -
Two sites, two domains, two brands, 98% same content
There are two affiliated brick & mortar retail stores moving into e-commerce. For non-marketing reasons separate e-commerce websites are desired. The two brands are based in separate (nearby) cities in the same Canadian province. Although the store name and branding will be different, the content on the site will either be near duplicates or exact duplicates. The more I look into this on Google and SEOmoz QA, the more I am concerned about the SEO implications of this. SEOmoz QA: Multiple cities/regions websites - duplicate content? "So, yes, because you are offering the same services at second location, you are thinking correctly about the need to rewrite all content so it's not a duplicate of site #1." Duplicate content - Webmaster Tools Help "However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic… In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results. ... Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results." Unfortunately, I would say there's very little chance that rewritten content will happen in the foreseeable future. With that said, I'd be greatly appreciative of the concerns and remedies that the SEOmoz community has to offer (even if they're for future use). Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GOODSIR0 -
Coupon Website Has Tons of Duplicate Content, How do I fix it?
Ok, so I just got done running my campaign on SEOMOZ for a client of mine who owns a Coupon Magazine company. They upload thousands of ads into their website which gives similar looking duplicate content ... like http://coupon.com/mom-pop-shop/100 and
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keith-Eneix
http://coupon.com/mom-pop-shop/101. There's about 3200 duplicates right now on the website like this. The client wants the coupon pages to be indexed and followed by search engines so how would I fix the duplicate content but still maintain search-ability of these coupon landing pages?0 -
Duplicate Content Question
My client's website is for an organization that is part of a larger organization - which has it's own website. We were given permission to use content from the larger organization's site on my client's redesigned site. The SEs will deem this as duplicate content, right? I can "re-write" the content for the new site, but it will still be closely based on the original content from the larger organization's site, due to the scientific/medical nature of the subject material. Is there a way around this dilemma so I do not get penalized? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mills1 -
Should I robots block site directories with primarily duplicate content?
Our site, CareerBliss.com, primarily offers unique content in the form of company reviews and exclusive salary information. As a means of driving revenue, we also have a lot of job listings in ouir /jobs/ directory, as well as educational resources (/career-tools/education/) in our. The bulk of this information are feeds, which exist on other websites (duplicate). Does it make sense to go ahead and robots block these portions of our site? My thinking is in doing so, it will help reallocate our site authority helping the /salary/ and /company-reviews/ pages rank higher, and this is where most of the people are finding our site via search anyways. ie. http://www.careerbliss.com/jobs/cisco-systems-jobs-812156/ http://www.careerbliss.com/jobs/jobs-near-you/?l=irvine%2c+ca&landing=true http://www.careerbliss.com/career-tools/education/education-teaching-category-5/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0
