Duplicate Domain Indexing Issue - Help Needed

[OldIrish]

When using my own domain at the web host <snip>, I occasionally have issues with two versions of the same site getting indexed by Google [example.com + example.hostingcompany.com]. This website hosting company always seems to issue a subdomain address with each site, despite opting not to use it.

Is there a tag I can insert into the head of my pages, which will only allow Google to index the site's unique example.com domain, while blocking the example.homestead.com domain from being indexed? I can't switch hosts for the time being, and am desperate to find a solution to the problem.

I should also mention that I am unable to alter the robots.txt, as the host won't allow it.

[edited by: goodroi at 12:04 pm (utc) on Mar 23, 2010]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]

[goodroi]

I don't know how that specific hosting company is setup. If I had to guess I would say that they are mirroring your content. Any change you make to block one version will block both version since the change will be mirrored to both places. When you combine that with the fact you are not being allowed to alter robots.txt, it is a simple answer. Get a new hosting company :)

I don't care if they are giving you free lifetime hosting. They are handicapping your seo efforts. If I was you I would get a new hosting company. There are countless hosting companies out there with reasonable prices & fast speed.

Is there any special reason you want to stay with this hosting company?

[OldIrish]

For a long list of reasons, I will need to continue to use my current host at least for the short term.

If anyone might know of a solution to this problem, it would be much appreciated.

[OldIrish]

I was told at another forum, to use a cross domain canonical tag for my problem. I have never used this tag before, does it sound like it would work?

[g1smd]

A simple set of canonical redirects should fix all of your problems. These go in the .htaccess file if you're using Apache.

Not only do you need to redirect requests for the sub-domain, but also for any IP address requests as well as the non-www version of your domain.

There's a ton of useful threads in the Apache forum here at WebmasterWorld.