Correct URL path, wrong domain name

[justin holton]

I apologize if this has already been addressed!

Basically, I have two websites, let's call them mainwebsite.com and otherwebsite.com.

My main website has a page, let's say it's located at..

http://mainwebsite.com/category/somepage.html

Now Google is indexing this page as http://otherwebsite.com/category/somepage.html for some odd reason, but that page does not exist on that site. So the path to the page is correct, but the domain name is wrong in Google's search results! So if the user tries to click the page in Google's search results they get a 404 error because the domain is wrong.

I checked out Google's cache and the page is definitely from mainwebsite.com. What's even more bizarre is that this domain name mix-up isn't happening for all the pages on that site, only some.

Any ideas of what would be causing this? A funky redirect of some kind?

[edited by: tedster at 5:23 pm (utc) on Sep. 16, 2008]
[edit reason] de-link the example urls [/edit]

[g1smd]

What is the cache date in Google results for the pages that are "wrong"?

It may be that it used to be set up incorrectly, and Google is still showing those old results.

If there is an easy way to identify all of the "wrong" URLs, and there is a simple pattern (or small number of different patterns that matches them), I would be very tempted to put a 301 redirect in for those, such that you still retain traffic heading towards those URLs, as well as signalling to Google and others to update what they list.

[justin holton]

Thanks for the reply.

The cache date is Aug 27, 2008. We first noticed this on Sept 5, 2008. I'm pretty confident the page never existed on that server. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be an obvious pattern either. I was also thinking about utilizing 301 redirects. I haven't done that because, if possible, I'd rather get at the heart of the problem rather than treat the symptom.

Does anyone know how it could hijack the domain like this? Related to server configuration? Redirects?

Unfortunately, I haven't been at this company very long and so I can only guess what the people before me did. :(

[dstiles]

Is there a link on one site to a page that's on the other site (ie set up with the wrong domain)? Run a link checker on both sites and check the results.

Also follow up any external sites that show up in the results - one of those may be linking to the wrong domain.

Check with Google Webmaster Tools to see if it reports any external links - if so check out those as well (assuming they are not undesirables which may be booby-trapped!)

[tedster]

So if the user tries to click the page in Google's search results they get a 404 error because the domain is wrong.

Make sure there's a real 404 http status in the server header, and not 302 > 200 or anything like that. It's the server header that matters here, and not the text on the error page.

[justin holton]

I've fixed the problem. Basically, mainwebsite.com and otherwebsite.com are on the same server. Their domain names both point to the same IP address. At my company we have an internal DNS, which is different than the DNS people use outside of our network. Because of the way IIS and the DNS had been configured if anyone from outside our network went to otherwebsite.com the request was handled by mainwebsite.com. Hence, the reason Google was archiving pages from mainwebsite.com with the domain name of otherwebsite.com. However, because of our internal DNS I could not recreate the problem. It was only recreatable from outside of our network!

[g1smd]

What a mess. Glad you got to the bottom of this.