dev site is getting PR

non linked dev site is getting PR of main site

[jpavery]

Hi Folks,
This past weekend a development site started to show PR.

i.e. dev.mysite.com has the same PR as www.mysite.com

The dev site is not linked from anywhere or redirected. There are no 301 redirects. When you land on dev.mysite.com you stay on that site.

Any ideas why this might happen?

Paul

[encyclo]

If the development site has the same content as your main site, you're asking for problems if it is open to all. You should password-protect it, or at the very least, place a robots.txt disallowing all indexing.

[Prolific]

I'd go further than password protecting it - don't make the server available to the internet, you're just asking for trouble.

[jpavery]

it is exactly the same content as the live site.

When I get a cache from google for dev.mysite.com it reads at the top:

"This is G o o g l e's cache of [mysite.com...] as retrieved on 17 Aug..."

I'll check server logs to see if it is being crawled.

I'm concerned about password protecting or excluding via robots.txt. What would happen if Google thought the password or robots.txt was coming from www.mysite.com?

The PR dev.mysite.com is showing is not correct; there is no way it could be that high. Plus the PR is the same on the internal pages. The PR is coming from www.mysite.com