Multiple Domains, Same IP address, redirecting to preferred domain (301) -site is still indexed under wrong domains
-
Due to acquisitions over time and the merging of many microsites into one major site, we currently have 20+ TLD's pointing to the same IP address as our "preferred domain:" for our consolidated website http://goo.gl/gH33w. They are all set up as 301 redirects on apache - including both the www and non www versions.
When we launched this consolidated website, (April 2010) we accidentally left the settings of our site open to accept any of our domains on the same IP. This was later fixed but unfortunately Google indexed our site under multiple of these URL's (ignoring the redirects) using the same content from our main website but swapping out the domain. We added some additional redirects on apache to redirect these individual pages pages indexed under the wrong domain to the same page under our main domain http://goo.gl/gH33w. This seemed to help resolve the issue and moved hundreds of pages off the index. However, in December of 2010 we made significant changes in our external dns for our ip addresses and now since December, we see pages indexed under these redirecting domains on the rise again.
If you do a search query of : site:laboratoryid.com you will see a few hundred examples of pages indexed under the wrong domain. When you click on the link, it does redirect to the same page but under the preferred domain. So the redirect is working and has been confirmed as 301. But for some reason Google continues to crawl our site and index under this incorrect domains. Why is this? Is there a setting we are missing? These domain level and page level redirects should be decreasing the pages being indexed under the wrong domain but it appears it is doing the reverse.
All of these old domains currently point to our production IP address where are preferred domain is also pointing. Could this be the issue?
None of the pages indexed today are from the old version of these sites. They only seem to be the new content from the new site but not under the preferred domain.
Any insight would be much appreciated because we have tried many things without success to get this resolved.
-
Susan,
Have not heard back from you.
Does this help?
Have you tried this method?
Looking for additional insight?
-
One thing about the navigating directly to an IP address, that will work as long as it's a dedicated IP because you're circumventing the name server, i.e. you can go to cnn.com via http://157.166.226.26/ and not be redirected to www.cnn.com because you're not being processed via the name server.
-
The IP address issue is more of an Apache issue as you have already mentioned, but the IP won't play into this issue.
There are 2 ways to help this fix itself:
- Add Canonicals to all your pages,
- Use an htaccess file with this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^[0-9]+(.[0-9]+){3} [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bradyid.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.bradyid.com/$1 [L,R=301]This will fix a few things, 1 removing anything that is linked to the IP address to be forwarded to the domain version, move anything that is linked to the mis-configured Apache to resolve properly.
This shouldn't work: http://12.69.60.161/ but it does.
Where's the xml sitemap? add that to your to-do list
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
-
301 Redirects Showing As 307 Redirects
Hi, Our clients are adamant that they have set up 301 permanent redirects on their websites, but when we check using Screaming Frog and various online HTTP status code checkers they are showing as 307 temporary redirects. Examples;
Technical SEO | | Webpresence
http://www.lifestylelifts.co.uk/home-lifts/
http://www.terrylifts.co.uk/ Again, the client says they are seeing 301 redirects. Why are we seeing 307's? Who is right? Very puzzling, any theories would be very much appreciated 🙂 Thanks in advance. Lee.0 -
301 Redirection, then 200 status for specific webpage
Hello everyone, Would like to seek your advice. Our company classified web pages currently set 301 redirection for product listing (expired) -> relevant category pages. At the same time, remove this webpage URL from the sitemap as well. In some cases, users reactivated the expired ads. In this case, the page will become status 200 again, also re-included in the sitemap again. Wondering if Search engines able to pick up and index the same webpage again? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | raysamu
Raymond0 -
Ranking for non-existing content which is 301 redirected
Hey there, In the beginning of this year I've made complete site migration from Dutch language to English. All the old Dutch URL's were 301 redirected to the English versions. I naturally lost rankings for all Dutch keywords during the next month. On the website there is no Dutch content anymore. But what happened now is that five months later the website started to rank for the Dutch keywords again. The page snippets in SERP are in English but the URL's shown are in Dutch (ending with .nl) and whenever a user clicks on the snippet he/she gets 301 to the correct English version. Any ideas what could be the reason for re-ranking of non-existing pages which gets 301 in SERP?
Technical SEO | | benesmartin0 -
301 redirect question
Hi Everyone When doing 301 redirects for a large site, if a page has 0 inbound links would you still redirect it or just leave it? Im just curious on the best practice for this Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | TheZenAgency0 -
CNAME vs 301 redirect
Hi all, Recently I created a website for a new client and my next job is trying to get them higher in Google. I added them in OSE and noticed some strange backlinks. To my surprise the client has about 20 domain names. All automatically poiting to (showing) the same new mainsite now. www.maindomain.nl www.maindomain.be
Technical SEO | | Houdoe
www.maindomain.eu
www.maindomain.com
www.otherdomain.nl
www.otherdomain.com
... Some of these domains have backlinks too (but not so much). I suggested to 301 redirect them all to the main site. Just to avoid duplicate content. But now the webhoster comes into play: "It's a problem, client has only 1 hosting account, blablabla...". They told me they could CNAME the 20 domains to the main domain. Or A-record them to an IP address. This is too technical stuff for me. So my concrete questions are: Is it smart to do anything at all or am I just harming my client? The main site is ranking pretty well now. And some backlinks are from their copy sites (probably because everywhere the logo links to the full mainsite url). Does the CNAME or A-record solution has the same effect as a 301 redirect, from SEO perspective? Many thanks,
Hans0 -
How to prevent duplicat content issue and indexing sub domain [ CDN sub domain]?
Hello! I wish to use CDN server to optimize my page loading time ( MaxCDN). I have to use a custom CDN sub domain to use these services. If I added a sub domain, then my blog has two URL (http://www.example.com and http://cdn.example.com) for the same content. I have more than 450 blog posts. I think it will cause duplicate content issues. In this situation, what is the best method (rel=canonical or no-indexing) to prevent duplicate content issue and prevent indexing sub domain? And take the optimum service of the CDN. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Does Google Still Pass Anchor Text for Multiple Links to the Same Page When Using a Hashtag? What About Indexation?
Both of these seem a little counter-intuitive to me so I want to make sure I'm on the same page. I'm wondering if I need to add "#s to my internal links when the page I'm linking to is already: a.) in the site's navigation b.) in the sidebar More specifically, in your experience...do the search engines only give credit to (or mostly give credit to) the anchor text used in the navigation and ignore the anchor text used in the body of the article? I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed. Just so I understand this... a.) if I were use a hashtag at the end of a link as the first link in the body of a page, this means that the rest of the article won't be indexed? b.) if I use a table of contents at the top of a page and link to places within the document, then only the areas of the page up to the table of contents will be indexed/crawled? Thanks ahead of time! I really appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | Spencer_LuminInteractive0 -
Should I move x-cart installation or 301 redirect?
We have an existing e-commerce site built on x-cart. The default store location is www.site.com/store. The domain root however is just a static HTML page (currently using mainly graphics) and a nav menu. What would be a better option: 1. Move the install location to the root directory and get rid of the static HTML page. We would have to manually 301 redirect all the old pages to the new location. Not sure if there are negative implications with that. 2. Just optimize the HTML landing page? Seems like it is better to have products and categories as close to the root domain as possible... 3. 301 redirect the domain to www.site.com/store/ and optimize the homepage within the store. This option means we dont have to worry about 2000 redirects or the hassle of moving the store. Anyone had any experience with this and suggestions?
Technical SEO | | BlinkWeb0