The Dupe Domain Indexing Dilemma
Keyword Champion Dan Thies deserves all the credit for this one: the Dupe Domain Indexing Dilemma. Dan freaked me out the other day when he told me one of my domains had a "dupe content problem" in Google. "Wha wha WHAAAAAAT?", I shrieked. Dan then calmly pointed me to his blog post above and explained that both the www version of my site and the version without the www were being indexed by Google, potentially attracting a duplicate content penalty and certainly diluting my hard-earned link popularity. Turned out I was competing with my own site for rankings!
The problem lies in the server configuration. Most servers are designed to show both versions of a web site to searchers, but this can cause some search engines (including Google) to index and treat both versions as separate sites - ouch! The solution? Implementing a 301 permanent redirect in your .htaccess file. Choose a default domain version and redirect the other version to it. The full redirect code is available from Dan's blog post above, but be warned, it WILL break any Front Page CGI scripts and corrupt FP extensions unless you add the additional code below:
----------
# -FrontPage-
RewriteEngine on
Options +ExecCGI
----------
It all ended happily, after much grunting and FP extension breaking, I managed to implement the redirect and (hopefully!) resolve the issue. Thanks Dan! Could YOUR site suffer from the Dupe Domain Indexing Dilemma? To check, go to Google.com and type in a search for both versions of your domain by using the "site" query: "site:http://www.yoursite.com" and "site:http://yoursite.com". If you see a different number of pages from each version listed, you've got DDID! Get that .htaccess entry in ASAP.
The problem lies in the server configuration. Most servers are designed to show both versions of a web site to searchers, but this can cause some search engines (including Google) to index and treat both versions as separate sites - ouch! The solution? Implementing a 301 permanent redirect in your .htaccess file. Choose a default domain version and redirect the other version to it. The full redirect code is available from Dan's blog post above, but be warned, it WILL break any Front Page CGI scripts and corrupt FP extensions unless you add the additional code below:
----------
# -FrontPage-
RewriteEngine on
Options +ExecCGI
----------
It all ended happily, after much grunting and FP extension breaking, I managed to implement the redirect and (hopefully!) resolve the issue. Thanks Dan! Could YOUR site suffer from the Dupe Domain Indexing Dilemma? To check, go to Google.com and type in a search for both versions of your domain by using the "site" query: "site:http://www.yoursite.com" and "site:http://yoursite.com". If you see a different number of pages from each version listed, you've got DDID! Get that .htaccess entry in ASAP.
3 Comments:
Does it matter where in the .htaccess file you add the extra ----------
# -FrontPage-
RewriteEngine on
Options +ExecCGI
---------- code, such as before or after the redirect, or can it simply be inserted anywhere in the text?
I've been trying both the redirect and the extra FrontPage code, and it leaves the FP extensions disabled no matter where the FP code gets placed in the .htaccess file. Also, the redirect will only work for the www option, and not the no-www one.
Read the comments at this thread: http://www.threadwatch.org/node/2817 for more detail on the FP code
Post a Comment
<< Home