Unable to fix issue with duplicate content

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Unable to fix issue with duplicate content

undercoverseo

12:17 am on Sep 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

Hi All,

Here's the situation. My web designer created a site on his test server, and Google indexed my website on his test server.

I had my designer delete the site from his server and 301 redirect all the indexed pages over to the newly launched website on our domain.

I've also submitted a sitemap to Google to get them to index my site.

The problem is, Google still thinks there's duplicate content and won't index the pages on my site. Yet the pages are still under his test servers address...even though everything's redirecting and no pages exist on that test server.

Any thoughts on how to tell Google to forget about the old test server and indexing my site?

jdMorgan

12:28 am on Sep 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

You could remove the redirects from the test server so that all URLs return a 404-Not Found response. Then use the URL removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools to delete those URLs from the index.

That, plus some fresh new relevant links to your real domain, should help.

Jim

Ajaxunion

6:19 pm on Sep 17, 2008 (gmt 0)

In the test server tell google not to crawl via robots.txt and in google webmaster tools ask them to remove it like jim said.

Also add links to your new site and give it time. If you have more links on the new site you will start ranking well. It can take 3 month though.

jdMorgan

7:11 pm on Sep 17, 2008 (gmt 0)

You must let them crawl, in order to discover that the pages are no longer present at that domain...

Jim

caribguy

1:17 pm on Sep 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

If the test site is on another TLD, let your web designer create a Google webmaster tools entry for that domain. Add an index page with the verification key, and then go into Tools > Remove URL

undercoverseo

5:00 pm on Sep 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

Thanks all. I've nuked the 301 redirects to let the pages 404. Since I don't have control over the original TLD, I've opted to report the broken links via Google Chrome. Let's see if this little tool does what it's supposed to! I'll report back with results :)

bilalseo

11:16 pm on Sep 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

I'm 100% agreed with Jim by his first post against your query.

undercoverseo

11:57 pm on Oct 7, 2008 (gmt 0)

As a follow up to my original post. The 404 worked like a charm. Nuked it from the old domain and now my pages are indexing on my new domain. I would have waited patiently using 301s but since the PR ranking on the old domain was Zero or unranked for my web pages...I wasn't super concerned about maintaining link juice.

Thanks all.