: Why does Google index two copies of a website, one on a development URL with the development site ranking better? I only found one question similar to mine, but it is for Yahoo search. Mine
I only found one question similar to mine, but it is for Yahoo search. Mine is regarding Google. My question is also a little extensive.
Background: I created a website for a client. In order to test it and check the client was happy before publishing, I would upload the website (from VS) to my Azure hosting account via Publish.
When it was complete, I would publish to mine, and then I would log into my client and publish the exact same website. They were identical. The dot. Every white space was identical.
My client has his domain from GoDaddy and paid for the extra service of search engine visibility. I had submitted his website to Google and told himto wait a few days before finding it.
To my suprise, I found my website on Google because it came up with the same description. Im not confused as to why it was on Google, but I am confused as to why my webiste was significally higher in the rankings. I think mine was on page 2 and his was on 4 or 5.
Why and how did this happen?
Some information:
It's one project on VS that was published to two different
hosting accounts. So it cant be anything to do with some settings or
hidden files. Also same keywords, text, alt tags etc. The ranking
would be the same when it came to these kind of things.
Neither of us have an SSL.
Both websites are hosted on the same company
(Azure) on different accounts.
Both our domains (on separate
accounts) are on GoDaddy
He pays for extra for SE visibility. I
dont.
His domain name includes key words searched. Mine is my own
portfolio so no relevent key words to his company within the domain
name.
Question: Why is my website significally higher in ranking?
In addition: I have since updated some text in the website description, as I noticed on his, Google was showing the description with a typo. I fixed this. I have also updated my own website to something completely new. It's a new project so even things like meta data would not be left behind.
However, Google was STILL showing the typo in the description to his website (so basically Google hadn't been updated) and my website still ranked higher than his.
I went to HIS goDaddy and resubmitted the website. The typo hassince dissapeared. However my website is still showing and ranking higher than his. Although I must say now he is only one behind me now. (i.e if Im number 12 he is number 13 and on the same page) I cant do a submit because I never did one in the first place. So how did Google find my website originally, and when will it update? It's been about 3 weeks.
To clarify: my website now is "Coming soon" with no content. And I published this on a new hosting account (just moved over the domain). So I cannot do any redirect, 303, or anything else because that copy of his website on my account no longer exists
More posts by @Shakeerah822
2 Comments
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What's the point on having the same web in two different domains? You are generating duplicate content. While you are working on a site, you should prevent it from being indexed.
Your site is ranking higher cause Google discover it first. You should do one of the following:
Use a 301 redirect from your domain to your client's domain.
Use the canonical tag
You need to set rel=canonical on all of your pages pointing to the pages on his domain. Or you have to 301 redirect the pages on your test site to his. You should also set the header to the pages on your site to NOINDEX and you should be doing this from now on when developing and testing sites for your clients so that Google doesn't index your demos anymore.
I've started to believe that Google has a way of determining the owner/developer of a new website. Whether it be through DNS/Server/IP or whois. Whatever it is I think they are doing this now. The reason I think this is that as my sites have gotten more successful in the past, my new sites on new domains are immediately crawled and indexed with Google and Google sends them traffic. They're sending me traffic without even me getting any links pointing to my new domain. This never happened in the past and it's happening at an increasing rate. I think this is similar to the author trust signal that they're using in that if they identify that an article author is trustworthy they will rank much higher regardless of what news site they are on. So I think they have some sort of owner/developer trust authority signal as well. There is a good chance that this is what has caused your demo site to rank above his. Your demo site domain/server just has more trust with Google than your client's own brand website. Google also discovered your demo site before his so it's hitting his site as the duplicate/plagiarised version. There are things you can do to fix this though and out of ethics alone, you do need to.
301 redirect
NOINDEX (NOFOLLOW)
Rel=Canonical
You can also set a followed link on all of your demo pages pointing to his domain. Google should see that as a signal that his domain is the valid version.
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