Why is the Dev site indexing and not my actual Domain
-
hi guys I had 2 word press sites built but since they went live a couple of things aren't working.
1.when I do a keyword search one of the sites comes back with the actual URL and when I do another keyword search for the same site the DEV site comes back indexed and not the actual URL.
2. The other site originally started indexing with the DEV site and not the URL and the developer tried to fix it and now it doesn't index at all. Its been long enough time for it to index.
Both URL's are live when put into a browser.
Any advice would be great
Thanks
Jamie
-
Thanks David.
-
Thanks David PMing you now.
-
Looks like your dev didn't block the dev site while it was being created. That sucks.
This is easy to fix. Make sure you have an updated sitemap file with recent change dates, and all the final URLs added. Also, go through Google's webmaster tools and fetch each new URL that has been added. If you still have a dev directory or folder on the server, block this with robots.txt.
Sitemap example:
<url><loc>https://DOMAIN.com/subpage/</loc>
<lastmod>2016-09-26T04:14:14Z</lastmod></url>
<priority>1.0</priority> (or whatever priority you want to set for the URLs)
<changefreq>Daily</changefreq>
-
Hi Jamie,
It sounds like the dev site has been removed from index, which is good, but I would check two things straight away on the proper site:
- Make sure your site doesn't have a meta robots "noindex" tags on each page
- Make sure your site isn't blocking crawlers (including search engines) in robots.txt
If this is a WordPress site, check Settings > Reading and make sure that the box that says 'Discourage search engines from indexing this site' is unchecked.
If you aren't sure how to do any of this, send me a PM with the domain names and I'd be happy to take a quick look.
Cheers,
David
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
-
Inner pages of a directory site wont index
I have a business directory site thats been around a long time but has always been split into two parts, a subdomain and the main domain. The subdomain has been used for listings for years but just recently Ive opened up the main domain and started adding listings there. The problem is that none of the listing pages seem to be betting indexed in Google. The main domain is indexed as is the category page and all its pages below that eg /category/travel but the actual business listing pages below that will not index. I can however get them to index if I request Google to crawl them in search console. A few other things: I have nothing blocked in the robots.txt file The site has a DA over 50 and a decent amount of backlinks There is a sitemap setup also any ideas?
Technical SEO | | linklander0 -
Site wide links from another domain - could these cause a problem?
Hi I manage the SEO in house for the site http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/ A new add on to our services has been launched in the form of an online store allowing us to sell, for example, expedition clothing that is relevant to the trips we offer. The store is managed elsewhere and sits on a subdomain of the company who are providing this service for us. There are sitewide links throughout this site back to our homepage: http://naturalworld.newheadings.com/index.php I'm just a bit concerned about these links from an SEO perspective and was wondering if we should request these are set up as no follow. Would appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KateWaite0 -
I have a sub domain that has live content on it but the root domain redirects to another URL. I know this is not great but what are the implications?
I have a subdomain that is populated and has content. The root domain that the sub lives on redirects to an entirely different URL. I am trying to make a case as to why this isn't great besides the fact that it is just weird user experiences. What are the SEO implications etc. Would any equity that gets built up on the subdomain get passed along in the redirect? Or will there be indexation issues with Google? Cheers, Mark
Technical SEO | | mjsikorsky0 -
How to remove all sandbox test site link indexed by google?
When develop site, I have a test domain is sandbox.abc.com, this site contents are same as abc.com. But, now I search site:sandbox.abc.com and aware of content duplicate with main site abc.com My question is how to remove all this link from goolge. p/s: I have just add robots.txt to sandbox and disallow all pages. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Index page
To the SEO experts, this may well seem a silly question, so I apologies in advance as I try not to ask questions that I probably know the answer for already, but clarity is my goal I have numerous sites ,as standard practice, through the .htaccess I will always set up non www to www, and redirect the index page to www.mysite.com. All straight forward, have never questioned this practice, always been advised its the ebst practice to avoid duplicate content. Now, today, I was looking at a CMS service for a customer for their website, the website is already built and its a static website, so the CMS integration was going to mean a full rewrite of the website. Speaking to a friend on another forum, he told me about a service called simple CMS, had a look, looks perfect for the customer ... Went to set it up on the clients site and here is the problem. For the CMS software to work, it MUST access the index page, because my index page is redirected to www.mysite.com , it wont work as it cant find the index page (obviously) I questioned this with the software company, they inform me that it must access the index page, I have explained that it wont be able to and why (cause I have my index page redirected to avoid duplicate content) To my astonishment, the person there told me that duplicate content is a huge no no with Google (that's not the astonishing part) but its not relevant to the index and non index page of a website. This goes against everything I thought I knew ... The person also reassured me that they have worked within the SEO area for 10 years. As I am a subscriber to SEO MOZ and no one here has anything to gain but offering advice, is this true ? Will it not be an issue for duplicate content to show both a index page and non index page ?, will search engines not view this as duplicate content ? Or is this SEO expert talking bull, which I suspect, but cannot be sure. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, it would make my life a lot easier for the customer to use this CMS software, but I would do it at the risk of tarnishing the work they and I have done on their ranking status Many thanks in advance John
Technical SEO | | Johnny4B0 -
Instant Indexing
I've been working on a site for a while now, methodically building content and building trust and authority. Lately I've noticed that anything I publish there appears to be instantly indexed by Google, which surprises me. I haven't had this happen before so I'm curious. I'd be interested to hear the experience of others.
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Some site pages are removed from Google Index
Hello, Some pages of my clients website are removed from Google Index. We were in top 10 position for some keywords but now I cannot find those pages neither in top 1000. Any idea what to do in order to get these pages back? thank you
Technical SEO | | besartbajrami0