Problem With Duplicate Content During Site Move?

[karembeu]

We are thinking about moving web/email hosts due to a distinct lack of service from our current ISP.

We are curently VERY well ranked naturally in Google, and I have a concern with the transition to the new host. We would likely move one domain over, as a test, then once we are happy that the new guys are okay, move the whole shebang.

I understand that Google can penalize for duplicate content, do you think this would qualify? This is obviously not some intentional way to get around Google, or inflate our links, listings etc., we simply think we have to change hosts.

Anyone have any feelings on this?

~karembeu

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 5:57 pm (utc) on Sep. 28, 2004]

[chubba]

hi karembeu,If you are buying a new domain as a test domain then simply put up a holding page with no links to the content as your index and set your robots.txt to not be spidered (as a precation) and the chances are that Googlebot will not see any of the pages in the test location.

If you are moving one site out of a bunch of sites (your post is not too clear about this) then it would not be duplicate content as you are saying the site is moved.

If this does not answer your question please be more specific in your post.

[karembeu]

It is one domain of many pointing to the same web site. It is an existing domain, but Google seems to take this into account already, and only has us listed under our primary domain.

I don't anticipate a proble, especially if there are no links back and forth, and the robots.txt is set up okay - just wanted to ask if anyone else had done this and if they had any problems.

Thanks for the reply.

[chubba]

Hi karembeu,

I would never advise pointing more than one domain to a site just in case the spiders found it.

Do you advertise the other URL's or are customers used to using them? If not then I would stop pointing them all to the same web space, there would be no reason for you to do this...

Chubba

[willardnesss]

Could multiple domain names pointing to the same website actually cause problems?

I am doing this right now - and I thought this was OK.

Has anyone heard of this causing problems or penalties?

[karembeu]

chubba, you're kidding right?

we have several product lines, all branded under a single company name. we have domains for each line pointing to the company site. MANY companies do this.

i'm confused by what you mean. i don' think we must be talking about the same thing. i try not to explain things well, makes for more intersting dialogue :)

[Vadim]

Anyone have any feelings on this?

I have an experience. I moved without a problem 4 month ago.

1. Use 301 redirect in your old site
2. Preserve for sufficient time your old site with the redirect.
3. Ask thouse who links to you change their links.

No problems but plenty of work.

Vadim.

[hermosa]

Forgive my ignorance but what is 301 re-direct?

[Vadim]

Forgive my ignorance but what is 301 re-direct?

301 states for the HTTP code that your server returns when an agent tries to get your page. 301 means moved permanently.

If your host is UNIX based you may use .htaccess file to redirect. Windows host also has something for 301 redirect but I am not an expert with Windows hosts. Search webmasterworld. It has been discussed here.

.htaccess is usually placed to you root directory. Ask your host for details and whether it is allowed (it usually is).

.htaccess is text file and should be transferred in text mode. I used the following commands:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [YourSite.com...] [R=301,L]

Vadim.