Host created a mirror copy of my site - rankings crashed

Need Some Expert Advice

[crashingflwrgrl]

I have operated an e-commerce automotive site for the past 2 years. In the beginning I had great success, with traffic and sales. Recently I was made aware of something my host was doing that may have hurt my rankings and which in turn made my sales pretty much dry up.

What they did was create a mirror of my site (and all their merchant's sites) and they gave the mirror site an address using my "customer number" as an ID. They said everybody does it this way (Yahoo stores, etc) and they use it "internaly" to identify each merchant and their email accounts. I must admit I don't fully understand it myself. It has something to do with the mail servers they say. Please clue me in if you know what they're talking about.

Anyways they admitted that Google is NOT supposed to be crawling this address. Well Google not only found this information, but it began indexing it! As a result there are duplicates of MY content out there under an address something like this....
www.mycustomernumber.[myhostsname]sites.com

I have evidence that its been indexing these mirror pages since at least Feb.05! And I've been beating my brains in trying to figure out WHY my site won't rank! Unfortunately I was not the only victim as many other merchants we're affected as well.

My questions are if Google is finding my content at both of the following addresses....
www.mycustomernumber.[myhostsname]sites.com
and
www.mysite.com

Isn't there an obvious risk of a duplicate content penalty here? And if my host simply no longer allows Google to crawl this info...will it be enough to bounce back? I should also mention that they were also recently caught using improper 302 re-directs... which also hurt some merchants.

Can I get a little advice here?

[ispy]

Somewhere in the Google Faq's (I dont remember where) it gives you code to prevent the google spider from crawling your page. I would manually add the code to the duplicate site to keep the spider out.

[ispy]

Oh, its here: [google.com...]

[crashingflwrgrl]

Almost everyone knows that you use a "no follow" command to prevent Google from crawling. Why didn't my host know this though? They claim they had NO IDEA Google was crawling these sites and don't know how Google found them in the first place.

I ask again: Will simply NOT allowing Google to crawl this info anymore... be enough to help me rebound after roughly 8 months of duplicate content? 99% of my indexed pages are "supplemental results" and so are the mirrored pages.

I would post evidence (in the form of links to google serps) to back me up here but I don't believe I can.... can I?

[RailMan]

>>They said everybody does it this way

no they don't ............
i'd change providers if i was you

[crashingflwrgrl]

If it wasn't such a huge hassle to move a site...I would. I also want to give my host the benefit of the doubt that they can fix this.... before I result to such drastic measures.

Is there any way that I am totally off here and something like this actually doesn't hurt a site's rankings?

[FalseDawn]

"Recently I was made aware of something my host was doing that may have hurt my rankings and which in turn made my sales pretty much dry up"

Relying purely on organic SE traffic, you will always be exposed to this risk. Didn't you do PPC?

In any case, Move hosts ASAP - quite why they needed to create subdomains for sites is a mystery to me.

You will need to add a permanent redirect from the subdomain address to your main address.
There's nothing you can do but wait until the G drops the duplicated content from its index.

[crashingflwrgrl]

Relying purely on organic SE traffic, you will always be exposed to this risk. Didn't you do PPC?

I was doing quite well before this fiasco and no longer did PPC. Trust me...I've spent my fair share on it in the past.

[jdMorgan]

> I also want to give my host the benefit of the doubt that they can fix this.

You're rather more forgiving than I would be if they'd cost me eight months of reduced revenue, and put the next 6 to 12 months (including the holiday season) of revenue at risk.

If they messed this up, what else might they mess up? The "everyone does it this way" excuse is really rather lame.

If you really cannot contemplate changing hosts, then at least you should insist that they immediately redirect HTTP requests (not SMTP or POP mail requests) for these 'alternate domains' to their proper domains using a 301-Moved Permanently redirect (nothing else will do, and check it here [webmasterworld.com]), and inquire as to whether they plan to compensate you for your losses.

Personally, I wouldn't put up with this level of service on an e-commerce site.

Jim

[crashingflwrgrl]

Here is the header check of the MIRROR site....

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 23:03:40 GMT
Server: WebServer 3-9
Set-Cookie: CustID=631520; expires=Sat, 04-Nov-2006 23:03:40 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDCSQTQSTA=CMFOBPPCLIMKKLDKHIAMLNNC; path=/
cache-control: private
Cache-control: private
Content-Type: text/html
X-Powered-By:WebServer
pragma: no-cache

As I understand it all they need to do is include a robots.txt file with "disallow" in it to stop Google from crwaling it again. How can I tell if they have in fact done this yet?

[jcmoon]

I've heard robots.txt is sometimes taken as a suggestion, though -- that some search engine bots pay attention to it, and some don't.

I've got a question along a similar line: is a mirror-site going to create a dupe-content problem? We ourselves have a mirror site, and as dupe-content issues have gained more attention, I can't help but wonder if we're about to get hurt.

[Leosghost]

Listen to Jim ..( and not just on this ) ..if your host did this you are unfortunately on their "gold service" ..do you really want to experience "platinum" ..lose them ..NOW ..! whatever the hassle it is ..it is less than being hosted by incompetants ..

your mileage will not vary :))

except in a positive sense