Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    8
    2273
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Motava
      Motava Subscriber last edited by

      For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site.

      Here is an example:

      A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result.

      But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced:

      UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
      ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63‎
      META DESCRIPTION TEXT

      UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
      www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120‎
      META DESCRIPTION TEXT2

      UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
      www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
      META DESCRIPTION TEXT2

      UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
      mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17‎
      META DESCRIPTION TEXT3

      ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27‎‎

      There are more but those are just some examples.

      These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Motava
        Motava Subscriber last edited by

        For those that are interested, we figured out the root of the problem and the fix. Maybe this will help someone down the road. Thanks to all that responded.
        As it seems all the domains/accounts hosted on our VPS are top level; so we couldn’t use robots.txt to fix this.

        The problem:

        -We have a handful of websites using a shared IP address – Only sites with SSL cert get a dedicated IP
        -Some of these websites have additional A record DNS names (mail.domain1, ns5.domain2, etc) that all resolve to that shared IP address
        -Within your browser if you went to one of those records it would pull up the website (account) that is first alphabetically within that shared IP pool
        -It’s assumed that a website or multiple websites somewhere in the web must have linked these domain names somewhere on their webpages – so search engines crawled them for the content of that first alphabetical website
        -Search engines then indexed the content of that site for these other DNS A records and displayed the alternate URLs in the SERPS

        The fix:

        Edit Apache’s httpd.conf file on our VPS – adding a new (first listed) virtual directory of that shared IP address to point to the servers cpanel default cgi page instead of listing one of our hosted accounts first.

        This page describes what we needed done and what fixed it for us: http://forums.spry.com/cpanel-whm/1568-how-can-i-change-default-page-ip-address-points.html

        Thanks again!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • ChristopherGlaeser
          ChristopherGlaeser @Motava last edited by

          You should be able to resolve this with robots.txt and .htaccess files, but one more thing I've learned to do is to use a domain name for the primary domain that I do not plan to submit to Google for indexing.  For example, I'll use arbitrary color names like silverblue.net as the primary domain and then the domains I intend to index will be virtual domains.  This isn't really necessary but it helps me keep all my domain names straight in my head and avoid the issue you described above.

          Best,
          Christopher

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Motava
            Motava Subscriber last edited by

            Thanks for the replies, guys. We are going to try Christopher's suggestion first and we'll update the question when it's resolved!

            ChristopherGlaeser 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • ChristopherGlaeser
              ChristopherGlaeser last edited by

              The other domains are ours, yes.

              Oh, that's a horse of a different color.  If you have multiple domains on one account, one domain will be the primary domain and the other domains will be virtual domains.  If you look at the file structure on your server, all the virtual domains will be sub-folders under the primary domain.  You need to create a robots.txt file in the primary domain that blocks the spiders from discovering the other domains through the sub-directory structure.  Otherwise, all the virtual domains will be duplicated, once via the primary domain and again via the virtual domain.

              Best,
              Christopher

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Motava
                Motava Subscriber @Chris.Menke last edited by

                The other domains are ours, yes.

                I don't think any of them are using Joomla.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Chris.Menke
                  Chris.Menke last edited by

                  Are those other domains also yours, by any chance and/or is this a Joomla cms?

                  Motava 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • customerparadigm.com
                    customerparadigm.com last edited by

                    Wow... that's not so ideal.  My guess is that all of those sites are sharing the same IP address, and the server's settings are such that if you hit the IP address with a forward slash (i.e.  http://00.00.00.00/domainname/) it's showing content.

                    My $0.02 is to find a new hosting company.... and one that gives each site it's own IP address instead of doing shared-level hosting with the same IP address in a name-based space.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • rayatarh545123

                      Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?

                      Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers  every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh545123
                      0
                    • Daaveey

                      Should I redirect a domain we control but which has been labeled 'toxic' or just shut it down?

                      Hi Mozzers: We recently launched a site for a client which involved bringing in and redirecting content which formerly had been hosted on different domains. One of these domains still existed and we have yet to bring over the content from it. It has also been flagged as a suspicious/toxic backlink source to our new domain. Would I be wise to redirect this old domain or should I just shut it down? None of the pages seem to have particular equity as link sources. Part of me is asking myself 'Why would we redirect a domain deemed toxic, why not just shut it down.' Thanks in advance, dave

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey
                      0
                    • rich.owings

                      Splitting and moving site to two domains - How to redirect

                      I have a client who is going to split their retail and wholesale business and rebrand the retail biz. So let’s say they are going to move everything from currentdomain.com to either retaildomain.com or wholesaledomain.com. The most important business for them is the retail site, so they want to pass on as much ranking power as they can from currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com. I see two choices here: We can 301 redirect all of currentdomain.com to retaildomain.com, and then redirect any wholesale pages to wholesaledomain.com. The advantage is that we can use GSC’s change of address tool to report the change to Google. The downside is that there is a redirect chain (2 hops) to wholesaledomain.com. Would this confuse Google? Or we can 301 redirect page by page from currentdomain.com to the appropriate page on either new site. This means no redirect chains but it also means that we can’t use GSC’s change of address tool. Which would you do and why? And is there another option that I'm missing? I appreciate any insights you can share.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rich.owings
                      1
                    • DCochrane

                      Outranking a crappy outdated site with domain age & keywords in URL.

                      I'm trying to outrank a website with the following: Website with #1 ranking for a search query with "City & Brand" Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 11 years & 9 months old Has both the City & brand in the URL name. The site is crap, outdated.. probably last designed in the 90's, old layouts, not a lot of content & NO keywords in the titles & descriptions on all pages. My site ranks 5th for the same keyword.. BEHIND 4 pages from the site described above. Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 4 years & 2 months old Has only the CITY in the URL. Brand new site design this past year, new content & individual keywords in the titles, descriptions on each page. My main question is.... do you think it would be be beneficial to buy a new domain name with the BRAND in the URL  & CITY & 301 redirect my 4 year old domain to the new domain to pass along the authority it has gained. Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference? Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out? Thanks for any help & suggestions on how to beat this old site or at least show up second.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane
                      0
                    • eventurerob

                      Hosting images on multiple domains

                      I'm taking the following from http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html "Splitting components allows you to maximize parallel downloads. Make sure you're using not more than 2-4 domains because of the DNS lookup penalty. For example, you can host your HTML and dynamic content on www.example.org and split static components between static1.example.org and static2.example.org" What I want to do is load page images (it's an eCommerce site) from multiple sub domains to reduce load times. I'm assuming that this is perfectly OK to do - I cannot think of any reason that this wouldn't be a good tactic to go with. Does anyone know of (or can think of) a reason why taking this approach could be in any way detrimental. Cheers mozzers.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eventurerob
                      0
                    • VTDesignWorks

                      Old Redirecting Website Still Showing In SERPs

                      I have a client, a plumber, who bought another plumbing company (and that company's domain) at one point. This other company was very old and has a lot of name recognition so they created a dedicated page to this other company within their main website, and redirected the other company's old domain to that page. This has worked fine, in that this page on the main site is now #1 when you search for the other old company's name. But for some reason the old domain comes up #2 (despite the fact that it's redirecting). Now, I could understand if the redirect had only been set up recently, but I'm reasonably sure this happened about a year ago. Could it be due to the fact that there are many sites out there still linking to that old domain? Thanks in advance!

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VTDesignWorks
                      1
                    • digisavvy

                      There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?

                      Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy
                      0
                    • nicole.healthline

                      Is 404'ing a page enough to remove it from Google's index?

                      We set some pages to 404 status about 7 months ago, but they are still showing in Google's index (as 404's). Is there anything else I need to do to remove these?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.