Changin URLs - duplicate content penalty

[marchayden]

I recently changed the URL of my site and dropped all the content from the old URL. However google still has a cache of the old site for a few of the pages.

This has led to the same pages on the new URL having a pr0 (the rest of the site has a grey bar) am I to assume this is a penalty?

Will this be rectified when google crawls the old site fully and sees that the pages have all gone?

Very annoying if I have been penalized just because google didn't update all the pages on the old site.

Hope someone has an answer for me.

[mat]

No, you won't be penalised, if, indeed, all traces of the old pages have been removed. You're likely to have to wait for one or two updates before your 'new' pages are ranked, however.

In this case, PR0 probably just means that Google is aware of your new pages but is not yet able to rank them. Work on links to the new location.

[marchayden]

Thats what I thought, however it does seem like a big coinsidence that the pages where google has the original site cached (on the old URL) have a white bar (on the new URL) and the ones where it has updated the cache have a grey bar (on the new URL). I would imagine it will probably sort itself out in a couple of months though as you say. I have already got the DMOZ entry changed over and a quite a few links.

[Slade]

You can help it along by putting in 302 redirects on the old address.

[PatrickDeese]

You can help it along by putting in 302 redirects on the old address.

I am pretty sure you mean 301 - 301 is "moved permanently", 302 is "moved temporarily", which means that Google will conserve the old domain.

[shakaal]

I have two domains. The parent domain is the main company. so it has all the information for subsidiaries. eg. the company is about cars and we have a subsidiary company that makes just doors,it has a different name and is geographically located elsewhere. We made a new domain for them....we took all the information that we had for the subsidiary in the section for them in the parent domain and put it into the new domain. While we still maintained that information in the parent domain and much more. Does anyone know if google will consider this duplication of data and ban our new domain.

It seems like they have. We had a pr of 5 for the new domain and not its a gray bar...but we are a legitimate subidiary...
What can i do about this ...can anyone answer this question for me.

[hcstudios]

Be cautious with the 301s until this update has settled down a bit...I have 301s on our old company domain name, and our new company domain name (in the index since Jan, pr4 on home page last month) now is PR0. Searches for our new company name show the old home page ahead of new domain (since we have a "we're changing our name" on the home page, the only page not 301'd). My gut feeling is that the 301s are being ignored right now (that may change as things get smoothed out with this index) and the new site is getting a duplicate content penalty.

If I had it do to all over again I wouldn't do 301s right off the bat, just replace each individual page with a simple HTML only "our name has changed click here" page. Then about 2 months later (hopefully 2 deep crawls later) I'd try the 301s.

[jdMorgan]

marchayden,
The fact that Google still has cached copies of your old pages indicates that the new ones have not yet been indexed, therefore it follows that they are not yet ranked.

shakaal,
You should redirect all pages on your "car company" domain that have to do with doors to the new "door company" site to avoid duplicate-content problems.

All,
A 301 redirect is what you should use to permanently relocate pages. It is part of the HTTP/1.1 specification [w3.org].

The problems reported here have to do with timing of domain changes versus deep-crawls, and the weird Google ranking algo change roll-out (not update) effects we are seeing. Let's not spread fear and unreasonable doubt here. If a page moves permanently to a new location, a 301-Moved Permanently server response is the correct way to inform user-agents; That's what's in the specification, and that's what we should do.

Also, various server config problems and common errors in implementing server redirects can cause unexpected behaviour. If you install any redirect, be sure to check that it returns the expected response using the Server Header checker [webmasterworld.com] tool here at WebmasterWorld.

HTH,
Jim

[shakaal]

Hi Jim
are you saying I can still maintian the pages in the original domain. I would prefer to let people be able to see the doors section, from within the main site, and not redirect them to the sister company.
ON the front page we do have links to sister companies.

Also I do not know how to write a 301, can you give an example thanks

[shakaal]

Actually I am not even sure what is going...on..i checked again..and now the page rank is showing..but then I cannot find the new domain as cached anywhere. Is google gone crazy or am I losing my sanity..

[jdMorgan]

shakaal,

> are you saying I can still maintian the pages in the original domain. I would prefer to let people be able to see the doors section, from within the main site, and not redirect them to the sister company.

No. That is duplicate content. Best-case, your doors domain will not be indexed or rank well, because the cars domain is older and already has the content. Worst-case, there might be some duplicate-content penalty, because it is clear the sites are related. Personally, I would not take the risk - you have to play by the search engines' rules, not by what you prefer.

The methods to implement a server-side redirect vary greatly, depending on what server your site is hosted on. You can find many threads discussing redirects on variuous servers using the "site search" link at the top of this page.

HTH,
Jim

[shakaal]

We have two domain names. The domain name A belongs to the parent company. At this domain we have information and content from one of our major sister company too. Few weeks ago we created domain name B for the sister company. We moved copy of the content from domain name A to domain name B but still maintained the original content in A. Even though domain A has lot more content than what B has, there is still duplication of content at least for all info pertaining to the section on company B since that info has been duplicated on to B too.
From our perspective we are not doing anything wrong, both are genuine businesses and since B is our sister company, we would like to promote it in both the places ie. A and B.
Can we get banned by google for this. What should we do to prevent this from happening? How do we tell google that this is a necessary business decision and not duplication? If we get banned than how do we get out of it, what do we do to get respidered.? all expert comments are welcome here...hope googleguy can answer this.

[chris_f]

shakaal,

IMHO, the duplicate content is not nessary so I would think you will be penalised. There are three ways around that I can see.

1. Remove the content from one of the sites and rewrite unique content
2. Remove all but snippets from site A and link to site B
3. Use you robots.txt to stop Google crawling the duplicate pages. That way the visitors still see it but GoogleBot doesn't

Chris

[Nick_W]

Doesn't being 'penalized' just mean that Google only includes the pages it sees as unique (eg 1 copy out of 2) though?

Nick

[chris_f]

Hi Nick,

That's a very good point. However, would Google penalise or ban? I actually think your right and they penalise rather than ban. How will Google now which one to ban though? I think they only way to go is to use the robots.txt to stop one version from being indexed.

Chris

[Nick_W]

Well, we'd have to get ciml in here but I believe that there is no ban and no penalty. Google just shows the highest PR of the 2 dupes...

Nick