Staging site - Treated as duplicate?
-
Last week (exactly 8 days ago to be precise) my developer created a staging/test site to test some new features. The staging site duplicated the entire existing site on the same server.
To explain this better -My site address is - www.mysite.com
The path of the new staging site was www.mysite/staging
I realized this only today and have immediately restricted robot text and put a no index no follow on the entire duplicate server folder but I am sure that Google would have indexed the duplicate content by now?
So far I do not see any significant drop in traffic but should I be worried? and what if anything can I do at this stage?
-
Yes, it would show up in your analytics as an active user but the fact that the query returns no results means it's not been indexed. All good.
Peter
-
Hey Peter,
The Analytics code could have helped to get the site indexed. Or even a G +1/Facebook Like/share/Stumble/etc button clicked by error.
@Rajat
Doing the search Peter suggested should return any indexed page.
-
Got it. No, no results show up but interestingly when I go to www.mysite.com/staging, it does show up as 1active user on analytic report, which is what got me worried and made me realize of this problem.
-
Hi Rajat,
No what I mean is put the following query into the search box
site:<yourdomainname>/<yourstagingfolder></yourstagingfolder></yourdomainname>
where yourdomainname is your domain name (e.g. mysite.com) and yourstagingfolder is your staging folder (e.g. staging), so ike this:
site:mysite.com/staging
Peter
-
Thanks Pete. When I search for mysite.com/staging on google, I only see mysite.com as first result...and nothing at all on staging. Is that what you mean I should check?
-
Hi Rajat
The analytics code may have given some signals to Google of pages to index but to test it the staging server's pages are in Google use site:mysite.com/staging (NB. no spaces between site and the domain name).
Peter
-
Thanks Federico. That's re-assuring. Also, a related point, since the whole site was duplicated, so was the Google analytic code.
Does that have any impact?
Also, is there a way to check if the test server was in fact indexed or not?
-
Hi Rajat
I agree with Federico. Also, if there was no active link on mysite.com to mysite.com/staging then it's unlikely Google would have found it unless the staging site had been submitted to Google via a sitemap for indexing. You should be fine.
Peter
-
You have done the necessary steps (disallowing in robots plus setting a noindex tag). There's shouldn't be anything to worry about. If you want to be entirely sure, you can add some HTTP authentication to the folder so only those knowing the credentials can access (you could find that some robots may not follow the disallow flag or noindex tag).
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
-
About porn sites and ranking
Hello, I'm thinking to extend my website into porn. At the moment there is no pornography on it, although we do talk about sex related topics and products (from dating to tutorials, to toys etc.) Would it be dangerous to keep the porn section on the same domain as the rest? Would this negatively affect my non-porn content as Googlebot would "flag" my website as being pornographic (although only a few pages would be)? Or simply Googlebot would leave the current non-porn pages ranking as they are now, just fine, and plus it would rank the porn pages if they "deserve" to? I hope my question is clear. I don't want to create a subdomain.
Algorithm Updates | | fabx0 -
Our partners are using our website content for their websites. Do such websites hurt us due to duplicate content?
Hi all, Many of our partners across the globe are using the same content from our website and hosting on their websites including header tags, text, etc. So I wonder will these websites are hurting our website due to this duplicate content. Do we need to ask our partners to stop using our content? Any suggestions? What if some unofficial partners deny to remove the content? best way to handle? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Condensing content for web site redesign
We're working on a redesign and are wondering if we should condense some of the content (as recommended by an agency), and if so, how that will affect our organic efforts. Currently a few topics have individual pages for each section, such as (1) Overview (2) Symptoms and (3) Treatment. For reference, the site has a similar structure to http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/heart-disease-overview-fact. Our agency has sent us over mock-ups which show these topics being condensed into one and using a script/AJAX to display only the content that is clicked on. Knowing this, if we were to choose this option, that would result in us having to implement redirects because only one page would exist, instead of all three. Can anyone provide insight into whether we should keep the topic structure as is, or if we should take the agency's advice and merge all the topic content? *Note: The reason the agency is pushing for the merging option is because they say it helps with page load time. Thank you in advance for any insight! Tcd5Wo1.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | ATShock1 -
Duplicate Content
I was just using a program (copyscpape) to see if the content on a clients website has been copied. I was surprised that the content on the site was displaying 70% duplicated and it's showing the same content on a few sites with different % duplicated (ranging from 35%-80%) I have been informed that the content on the clients site is original and was written by the client. My question is, does Google know or understand that the clients website's content was created as original and that the other sites have copied it word-for-word and placed it on their site? Does he need to re-write the content to make it original? I just want to make sure before I told him to re-write all the content on the site? I'm well aware that duplicate content is bad, but i'm just curious if it's hurting the clients site because they originally created the content. Thanks for your input.
Algorithm Updates | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
My Site PR lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic !
My Site PR5 lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic ! What might be the problem ? Nov 29-2012 my site was hacked very badly and google Blacklisted me for the first time and if you see now " it says, Past 90 days nearly 19 times my site was acted as medium to spread virus" Even thought we checked our FTP, Cpanel or Home Directory - Everything seems good. My domain which was hosted - has other domains in the same network and some are porn - those sites are injecting malicious code ! May be that's the reason or please give me some idea how to improve it !
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
Duplicate Pate Content - 404's or 301's?
I deleted about 100 pages of stale content 6 months ago and they are currently returning 404's. The crawl diagnostics have pointed out 77 duplicate pages because of this. Should I redirect these as 301's to get rid of the error or keep them as 404's? Most of the pages still have some page authority but I don't want to get penalized. Just looking for the best solution. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | braunna0 -
Why if PR and DA are higher is this site lower in SERPS
Hi there Why if PR and DA are higher is this site lower in SERPS. Example: https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=samsung+SF-4200+cartridge&oq=samsung+SF-4200+cartridge&gs_l=hp.3...13009.13824.2.14464.2.2.0.0.0.0.72.143.2.2.0.eiatsh..0.0.l4idQl3RGWc&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=69f1c60047c60e0c&biw=1045&bih=580 Pos 1 www.inkfactory.com/ink-cartridges/samsung/sf4200-series PR:1 DA:48 Pos 3 www.internet-ink.co.uk › SAMSUNG INK PR:25 DA:60 I though is you had top DA and PR you should out rank those below you?
Algorithm Updates | | smashseo0 -
Google's reaction to site updates
Hi, Is it safe to assume as soon as Google indexes updates I've made to my site that any ranking changes the updates effected will happen at that same time, or is there ever a lag time before these changes ( if any ) take effect?
Algorithm Updates | | minutiae0