Sphinn - SEO hosting 101 - don't leak your staging urls into Google!

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SEO hosting 101 - don't leak your staging urls into Google!

Went Hot: July 25, 2008 - 11:36 am
Posted By: Hannah 79 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://seogadget.co.uk)
Category: SEO

Sometimes duplicate content problems are not at all easy to find and here’s a classic example. A group of recruitment websites leaking their staging server URLs into Google’s, Yahoo’s and Live’s index. In live’s case, the problem is quite severe with more than 6000 indexed URLs at the staging site hosting.hotlizard.co.uk.

Richard Baxter provides a fantastic example of what can happen when staging URLs are leaked, and provides a comprehensive list of checks and fixes to prevent this.

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from thejimgaudet 77 days ago #

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Great idea by
g1smdAddind PHP code to check the domain name and writing a noindex tag to the page. A nice easy fix I think.

from g1smd 77 days ago #

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Glad it was useful. Saved me a ton of work, and relieves me of one more thing that I don't have to think about.

I often like to design problems out.

from richardbaxterseo 77 days ago #

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Agreed - very nice comments g1smd and thanks for dropping by! Really appreciate your input.

from NickWilsdon 76 days ago #

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@g1smd very useful tip that Ian. I've been using .htaccess on our development area but this sounds a much better option. Thx.

from g1smd 76 days ago #

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I also like to redirect using .htaccess as that fixes the URL to the right domain should anyone copy the URL from their browser, and paste it into the content of some other site as a link.

However, I always have the PHP option installed too. This acts as a backup in case the .htaccess file goes AWOL on a server move or somesuch. More likely, it helps if there is a URL combination that can access the site, but it is a combination that I am not aware of (usual things are bare IP address, IP address with folder name, wild-card sub-domains off the main domain, and both sub-domains and folders off the hosting company domain name), as it is easy to miss one if someone else has set the server up.