: What to do with pages that leaked into SERP due to faulty server configuration There are two sites on one server: http://www.exampleA.com lives in the root http://www.exampleB.com live in the
There are two sites on one server:
www.exampleA.com lives in the root www.exampleB.com live in the htdocs web folder
SSL on the server was configured incorrectly for www.exampleA.com by the host. This resulted in many pages that do not exist on www.exampleB.com to get indexed under that domain. Here some examples:
www.exampleB.com/help-page/ is indexed but when you click on it you see the content of www.exampleA.com/help-page/. There are a ton of pages in SERP that look like this: www.exampleB.com/node/123, www.exampleB.com/node/302 and etc. All of these belong to www.exampleB.com
Basically, all SSl pages from exampleA.com are indexed under exampleB.com and are mirroring the content.
Things I have done so far:
1) Moved www.exampleB.com to a new server because the old host could not figure the issue out.
2) Forced https to http in .htaccess which was not possible on the old host. However, on the new host (WP Engine) the redirect might not work all the time since .htaccess might get ignored because of Nginx setup.
Now I am struck with about 400 - 500 junk pages in SERP that return a 404.
Do I 301 those pages to / or just let them be since they were not going to any appropriate content in the first place?
Is there anything else I am forgetting?
More posts by @Shelley277
1 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
A 404 response is the appropriate error message, you could even use 410 gone if you wanted. It's best not to use any redirect as it sounds like you don't want ExampleA.com associated with ExampleB.com, time should resolve this issue. If your in a hurry and have plently of time on your hands then you can manually remove the urls from Google webmaster tools with the request url removal tool.
Also, even with 500 odd 404 errors in webmaster tools this will not harm your SEO, it may however temporary slightly, don't redirect just to satisfy webmaster tools. 500 Urls should take between 3-12 weeks for Google to resolve. A little advice would be whenever changing host or adding features always ensure you do full testing. Google doesn't instantly de-index and redirect stuff on different domains in one evening, it normally takes days to weeks, and from that sounds of it this went unnoticed for some time.
Terms of Use Create Support ticket Your support tickets Stock Market News! © vmapp.org2024 All Rights reserved.