swww site duplication

[ChicagoFan67]

www.example.net/ ranks at #1 for a keyword. Has been in this position for a few years and has sitelinks as well as a second page listed at #2.

When I have a look at page 2 of the Google results I see another double indented entry (different pages), this time for swww.example.net/

Is anyone able to explain to me what is going on? Why am I seeing "swww"?

[edited by: tedster at 3:22 pm (utc) on May 10, 2008]
[edit reason] switch to example.net - it can never be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

The extra "s" is an easy-to-make typo when trying to type a "w". A toolbar user, or another webmaster building a link to you could easly type that in. Does the swww version resolve with a 200 OK status? How about "anyoldgarbage.example.net"?

If so, it sounds like your server might have wildcard subdomains switched on. If your server is configured to resolve wildcard subdomains, then any url Google picks up will get indexed since it resolves - and eventually this can hurt your rankings.

[edited by: tedster at 5:12 pm (utc) on May 11, 2008]

[ChicagoFan67]

Yes, "anyoldgarbage.example.net" does resolve as well.

Thanks for replying. I now know what to write in an email to my host to get them to fix the situation. In the meantime, I'll add a 301 redirect for that url.