When I searching our web site on Google I found three sites with the same content show up. I always thought we were using only one site www.foo.com, but it turn out we have www.foo.net and www.foo.info with the same content as www.foo.com.
I know it is extremely bad to have the same content under different URL. And it seems we have being using three domains for years and I have not seen punitive blunt so far. What is going on? Is Google using new policy like this blog advocate?http://www.seodenver.com/duplicate-content-over-multiple-domains-seo-issues/ Or is it OK using DNS redirect? What should I do? Thanks
If you are managing the websites via Google Webmaster Tools, it is possible to specify the "primary domain".
However, the world of search engines doesn't stop with Google, so your best bet is to send a 301 redirect to your primary domain. For example.
www.foo.net should 301 redirect to www.foo.com
www.foo.net/bar should 301 redirect to www.foo.com/bar
and so on.
This will ensure that www.foo.com gets the entire score, rather than (potentially) a third of the score that you might get for link-backs (internal and external).
Look into canonical links, as documented by Google.
If your site has identical or vastly
similar content that's accessible
through multiple URLs, this format
provides you with more control over
the URL returned in search results. It
also helps to make sure that
properties such as link popularity are
consolidated to your preferred
version.
They explicitly state it will work cross-domain.
Related
I have 3 domains
these 2
http://www.janhendrikx.be
http://www.standenbouw-jan.be
redirect to
http://www.ontwerpbureaujan.be/
In google webmasters I added ontwerpbureaujan
Do I have to add the others too? Or do I get duplicate content
Do I have to use canonical URLs? How?
'Standenbouw' is my main seo keyword, maybe I should add http://www.standenbouw-jan.be to webmasters, not ontwerpbureaujan ? ...
I'm sure janhendrikx.be & standenbouw-jan.be have 301 redirects to ontwerpbureaujan.be
If not, please get it done by your Web host else Google will actually consider them as three different websites and will crawl them all.
If they have 301 redirects, then you could add the others too and Google would know that they are the same site and hence wouldn't crawl all of them.
But you could still add all of them and it may increase your pagerank for the keyword and in that case you could mention http://www.ontwerpbureaujan.be/ as your preferred domain on the site settings area.
Here are a few recommendations by Google itself:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en#4
Good luck!
We have a website that is used to showcase our various products. The website uses MVC4 and subdomains areas.
product1.website.com
product2.website.com
We use the subdomain to determine which area to route the request.
Lately we have been getting http HEAD requests to our site using the IP only. Without the subdomain we can't know which area to send the request.
What should we do?
Send back a 404
Redirect to our most important area/product
Redirect to our company website
why not redirect users to an overview page where they see a short list of the products. In this way you can redirect them behind the screens to whereever you want without hem knowing and this also has the ability to be used when user make typo in the url so that they are 'guided' to the right product and even find other ones.
-a 404 usually makes people seek elsewhere since tey think they have the wrong IP
- redirect to most important product may result in confusion when you change your major product (users tend to bookmark a lot of useless urls)
- redirect to the company website is to my opinion the lesser of all evils, but users tend to get lost when redirected to a 'general' website.
example: you're looking for Windows 8 download and have the IP bookmarked
- 404 error: oh the page no longer exists
- main product: windows 9 is out but for some reason you still need windows 8: you spend more time looking for what you really need and probably find it elsewhere
- overview page: you see what you need in a list and if the list is short you quickly find it, otherwise a simple search reveals the item also.
so redirect to overview page is still a winning shot in my opinion
Alright, you think that this might be one of the most asked question on the internet, and you're tired reading the exact same answers. So let's focus on one of the most common answer, and forget about the others.
One of the common answer is:
"The https-site and the http-site are two completely different sites;
it’s a little bit like having a www version of the site and a non-www
version. Make sure you have 301 redirects from the http URLs to the
https ones." (source:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/seo-for-https-with-s-like-secure)
So here's my question:
Why are people saying that https and http are two different websites? How different is https://www.mydomain.com from http://www.mydomain.com?
The URI is the same and the content is the same. Only the protocol changes.
Why would the protocol have any impact on SEO? Whether or not the content is encrypted from point A to point B, why would that matter SEO wise?
Thanks for your help!
-H
Http and https could technically be two different sites. You could configure your server to server completely different content. They have two different urls (the difference being that s).
That being said, almost all webmasters with both http and https serve nearly identical content whether the site is secure or not. Google recognizes this and allows you to run both at the same time without having to fear duplicate content penalties.
If you are moving from one one to another, you should treat it similarly to other url changes.
Put 301 redirects in place so that each page gets properly redirected to the same content at its new url
Register both versions in Google Webmaster Tools
I have not personally done this switch, but it should be doable without problems. I have made other types of sitewide url changes without problems in the last couple years.
The other alternative would be to run both http and https at the same time and switch users over more gradually. As they log in, for example.
Update to above answer as on August 2014, Google has just confirmed that sites secured by SSL will start getting a ranking boost. Check official statement here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html
Don't think about it in terms of protocol. Think about it in terms of potentiality from a search engines point of view.
http://example.com and http://www.example.com can be completely different sites.
http://example.com/ and http://www.example.com/home can be completely different pages.
https://www.example.com and http://www.example.com can, again, be completely different sites.
In addition to this, https pages have a very hard time ranking. google etc.
If your entire site is https and pops an SSL certificate to an HTTP request, G views them as secure and that they're https for a reason. It's sometimes not very clever in this regard. If you have secure product or category pages, for instance, they simply will not rank compared to competitors. I have seen this time and again.
In recent months, it is becoming very clear Google will gently force webmasters to move to HTTPS.
Why are people saying that https and http are two different websites?
How different is www.mydomain.com from
www.mydomain.com?
Answer: Use the site: operator to find duplicate content. Go to a browser and type:
site:http://example-domain.com
and
site:https://example-domain.com
If you see both versions indexed in Google or other search engines they are duplicates. You must redirect the HTTP version to the HTTPS version to avoid diluting your websites authority and a possible penalty from Google's Panda algorithm.
Why would the protocol have any impact on SEO?
Answer:
For ecommerce websites, Google will not rank them well without being
secure. They do not want users to get their bank info etc stolen.
Google will be giving ranking boosts to sites that move to HTTPS in
the future. Although it is not a large ranking signal now, it could
become larger.
The guys at Google Chrome have submitted a proposal to dish out
warnings to users for ALL websites not using HTTPS. Yes, I know it
sounds crazy, but check
this out.
Info taken from this guide on how to move to HTTPS without killing your rank.
Recently, if SSL is inactive in Firefox browser, it shows an error. You must enable SSL and redirect the URL to HTTPS 301
When users entering domain www.example.com, it has to check for the country from the IP and should redirected to some other language specific domain eg: www.example.co.in. Will the search engine crawler recognize both www.example.com and www.example.co.in? Will this effect the search engine ranking?
Someone could guide me on the disadvantages of using IP masking.
Thanks & Regards,
Kavitha
I think it is interesting to note that Google returns HTTP/1.1 302 Found to redirect you to your country specific domain when you visit google.com from any country outside the US.
I suggest reading Matt Cutt's article (a Google software engineer) on how Google handles the 302 Redirect: SEO advice: discussing 302 redirects.
Different search engines handle the 302 redirect in a different way. Google also makes a distinction between redirects towards the same domain, and off-domain redirects. In general, using redirects will make your SEO more complicated and very tricky, and you risk having your original domain ignored by search engines.
You may also want to check out the following article on how the Google crawler handles the various HTTP status codes: Google Webmaster Central - HTTP status codes.
HTTP/1.1 302 Found code is used for temporary redirects, so it could work. However, it is not recommended as Google will be unable to identify domain example.com with any content at other domains - basically, what I am saying is that Google spider will be redirected too based on its IP and only (presumably) English content will be indexed for this domain. If that's OK with you, then you are set.
Please, be advised this is a big no-no(!) from usability perspective and users everywhere hate this behaviour. Google offers alternative link to go to google.com even after redirection.
I have a customer that been on the web for some time. They have bought a domain name that describe it product, and a second one more up to date. Now that company has evolved to something more general and has bought a 3rd domain - something like:
vegetables.com (2005)
ecolo-vegetables.com (2006)
good-health-eating.com (2009)
Here are my questions:
What is the bet way to get all those domains under the new name?
The new name is unknown to search engine and other linker, I don't want to lose the ranking, so what is the best way to keep that ranking?
Can I point URLs to the "best" ranked domain?
What append to the backlinker? they link to which domain?
The new domain has a "-" in the name... which is really good to SEO but a little unnatural to type, should I get the no dash version too?
n.b. It make sense to redirect all the domain under the same, but will you choose the oldest (with modrewrite) or the newest but with no life under it's belt (so it doesn't exist anywhere in search engine)
another p.s. Some will tell me to redirect with .htaccess, but should I change the dns to point to the last .com. which solution is better
Are all three sites "Different" or do they point to the same website/content?
Use 301 Redirects to redirect your old domain names to the new domain names. If all domains are pointing to the same website, make sure you also use the Canonical Tag on all your pages.
If you 301 Redirect from the old domain names / urls, your rankings will be transfered to your new domain/pages. (the only exception to this may be any extra points you get from embedded keywords in your old domain names).
You should point old urls to your "new" urls/domain. Rankings and link juice should/will be transfered to the new urls/domain.
Ideally all your backlinks should update their links to the new domain, but it doesn't really matter. If the old domains are 301 redirecting to the new domain anyway, point to the old domain is just like pointing to the new domain.
Definitely get the no-dash version of the domain as well and just have it 301 redirect to the actual domain you want to target.
I'll give this a go.
1. You could possibly have redirects or just allow the DNS of the domain to point to the new (desired) website.
2. It's not hard to understand SEO (Search Engine Optimization) nowadays - ensuring you have the correct meta tags and other SE info will give you a big helping hand. There isn't any way of transferring SE ranks.
3. That's possible. You could have ABCDEF.COM at number 3 on google, but then set ABCDEF.COM to redirect to GHIJKL.COM.
4. If you set up redirects, and the new site has the same content as the old one, there is the possiblity of setting up your DNS and your redirect to redirect to the new version of the previous page on the new website.
( I don't think I worded that very well, hope you catch my drift )
5. Out of pure experience I'd say yes, get both. That way you can market to your customer audience as ABCDEF.com, but show to SEs as AB-CD-EF.COM.
Here is the best answer i got from this link
302 and 301 Redirects
When a request for a page or URL is
made by a browser, agent or spider,
the web server where the page is
hosted checks a file called
'.htaccess'. This file contains
instructions on how to handle specific
requests and also plays a key role in
security. The '.htaccess' file can be
modified so that it instructs
browsers, agents or spiders that the
page has either temporarily moved (302
redirect) or permanently moved (301
redirect). It is usually possible to
implement this redirect without
messing with the '.htaccess' file
directly, using your web host's
control panel instead.
From a search engine perspective, 301
redirects are the only acceptable way
to redirect URLs. In the case of
moved pages, search engines will index
only the new URL, but will transfer
link popularity from the old URL to
the new one so that search engine
rankings are not affected. The same
behavior occurs when additional
domains are set to point to the main
domain through a 301 redirect.
And the last word : from this link that just confirm what i know know !
First off, ensure you're using "301 redirects" rather than "302 redirects" or the link juice (PageRank) won't transfer to the destination URL. You can verify that 301s (not 302s) are in place by using a "server header checker" like this one. Only a 301 tells engines the previous URL has moved permanently and thus forwards the page's link equity to the new location.