Virtual Domains and Duplicate Content
-
So I work for an organization that uses virtual domains. Basically, we have all our sites on one domain and then these sites can also be shown at a different URL.
Example:
Now the problem comes up often when we move the site to a brand's URL versus hosting the site on our URL, we end up with duplicate content. Now for god knows what damn reason, I currently cannot get my dev team to implement 301's but they will implement 302's. (Dont ask)
I also am left with not being able to change the robots.txt file for our site. They say if we allowed people to go in a change this stuff it would be too messy and somebody would accidentally block a site that was not supposed to be blocked on our domain. (We are apparently incapable toddlers)
Now I have an old site, sub.agencysite.com/store ranking for my terms while the new site is not showing up.
So I am left with this question: If I want to get the new site ranking what is the best methodology?
I am thinking of doing a 1:1 mapping of all pages and set up 302 redirects from the old to the new and then making the canonical tags on the old to reflect the new. My only thing here is how will Google actually view this setup? I mean on one hand I am saying
"Hey, Googs, this is just a temp thing." and on the other I am saying "Hey, Googs, give all the weight to this page, got it? Graci!"So with my limited abilities, can anybody provide me a best case scenario?
-
Sadly I can't say for sure what the outcome will be given that it's mixed signals. There's honestly no way to know in advance what would happen either short term or over time as Google attempts to sort it out via other signals and cross-referencing factors.
-
So staying confined to my limitations except the robtots.txt file do you think I have better luck with this:
Using a rel=canonical for the next month and allowing the SE's to index as many of those new pages as possible, hoping they get as good of visibility as the old site, and then after a month robots out the old pages, to remove them from the SE's but 302 them to the new pages anyways just for consistency as far as a visitor is concerned.
-
As you likely already know, 302 says "keep this site/page indexed". So until and unless you find a way to help others in the organization grasp the significant damage that does, you're only applying band-aids that may or may not have some slight mitigating impact.
No matter what else you come up with, it's not going to be viable as far as bigger picture significant improvements to your dilemma. Instead, it causes search engines confusion at best, from which you may get lucky some of the time, until a competitor comes along and does things the right way.
This is because ultimately the 302 overrides canonical signals, which are not directives the way a 301 is a directive. So the 302 carries more weight in the evaluation process.
As such, education and dialogue involving company owners is going to be critical. When owners are able to grasp the issues at stake, developers then have no choice but to give up myopic control. Without that buy-in, you're in a losing battle from the gate.
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
-
Do you think this case would be of a duplicated content and what would be the consequences in such case?
At the webpage https://authland.com/ which is a food&wine tours and activities booking platform, primary content - services thumbnails containing information about the destination, title and prices of the particular services, can be found at several sub-pages/urls. For example, service https://authland.com/zadar/zadar-region-food-and-wine-tour/1/. Its thumbnail/card through which the service is available, can be found on multiple pages (Categories, Destinations, All services, Most recent services...) Is this considered a duplicated content? Since all of the thumbnails for services on the platform, are to be found on multiple pages. If it is, which would be the best way to avoid that content being perceived by Google bots as such? Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZD20200 -
Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?
Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website. The problem is its a directory page to different locations. E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations: www.sitename.com/locations/london www.sitename.com/locations/rome www.sitename.com/locations/germany The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content. Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page? I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map. Help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchlondon0 -
URL Capitalization Inconsistencies Registering Duplicate Content Crawl Errors
Hello, I have a very large website that has a good amount of "Duplicate Content" issues according to MOZ. In reality though, it is not a problem with duplicate content, but rather a problem with URLs. For example: http://acme.com/product/features and http://acme.com/Product/Features both land on the same page, but MOZ is seeing them as separate pages, therefor assuming they are duplicates. We have recently implemented a solution to automatically de-captialize all characters in the URL, so when you type acme.com/Products, the URL will automatically change to acme.com/products – but MOZ continues to flag multiple "Duplicate Content" issues. I noticed that many of the links on the website still have the uppercase letters in the URL even though when clicked, the URL changes to all lower case. Could this be causing the issue? What is the best way to remove the "Duplicate Content" issues that are not actually duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Duplicate Content: Organic vs Local SEO
Does Google treat them differently? I found something interesting just now and decided to post it up http://www.daviddischler.com/is-duplicate-content-treated-differently-when-local-seo-comes-into-play/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daviddischler0 -
Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page
Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension. so they indexed www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's www.samplepage.com/page.html How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension? I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler0 -
Reinforcing Rel Canonical? (Fixing Duplicate Content)
Hi Mozzers, We're having trouble with duplicate content between two sites, so we're looking to add some oomph to the rel canonical link elements we put on one of our sites pointing towards the other to help speed up the process and give Google a bigger hint. Would adding a hyperlink on the "copying" website pointing towards the "original" website speed this process up? Would we get in trouble if added about 80,000 links (1 on each product page) with a link to the matching product on the other site? For example, we could use text like "Buy XY product on Other Brand Name and receive 10% off!"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Will an active forum on our domain help with rankings by fresh content?
We have a very large ecommerce store with little fresh content being added, accept through a web blog on the sub domain. We are thinking of moving over our blog that is on another domain entirely and has a lot of active users. But first I want to make sure it will actually help the domains rankjings, and second i'm concerned about the duplicate content on the old forum if we move it to the main domain. Should we just copy over all the content, 301 the old forum URL's to the new ones? Thanks much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Nuanced duplicate content problem.
Hi guys, I am working on a recently rebuilt website, which has some duplicate content issues that are more nuanced than usual. I have a plan of action (which I will describe further), so please let me know if it's a valid plan or if I am missing something. Situation: The client is targeting two types of users: business leads (Type A) and potential employees (Type B), so for each of their 22 locations, they have 2 pages - one speaking to Type A and another to Type B. Type A location page contains a description of the location. In terms of importance, Type A location pages are secondary because to the Type A user, locations are not of primary importance. Type B location page contains the same description of the location plus additional lifestyle description. These pages carry more importance, since they are attempting to attract applicants to work in specific places. So I am planning to rank these pages eventually for a combination of Location Name + Keyword. Plan: New content is not an option at this point, so I am planning to set up canonical tags on both location Types and make Type B, the canonical URL, since it carries more importance and more SEO potential. The main nuance is that while Type A and Type B location pages contain some of the same content (about 75%-80%), they are not exactly the same. That is why I am not 100% sure that I should canonicalize them, but still most of the wording on the page is identical, so... Any professional opinion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naymark.biz0