Hi Moz Fans! - Please help.
We had a acme.stagingdomain.com while a site was in development, when it went live it redirected (302) to acmeprofessionalservices.com (real names redacted!!)
no known external links to staging site
although staging site url has been emailed from Google Apps(!!!)
now found that staging site is in the index even though it redirects to the proper public site.
and some (but not all) of the pages are in the index too. They all redirect to the proper public site when visited.
It is convenient to have a redirect from the staging site to the new one for the team, Chrome etc. remember frequently visited sites. Be a shame to lose that.
Yes, these pages can be removed using webmaster tools.
But how did they get in the index to start with?
And if we're building a new site, and a customer has an existing site is there a danger of duplicate content etc. penalties caused by the staging site?
We had a similar incident recently when a PDF that was not linked anywhere on the site appeared in the index. The link had been emailed through Google Apps, and visited in Chrome, but that was it.
So 3 questions.
Why is the staging site still in the index despite the redirects?
How did they get in the index in the first place?
Will the new staging site affect the rank of the existing site, eg. duplicate content penalties?
