domain issue - duplicate content???

[galvin]

I use shared hosting through HostGator.  You can have one main domain and then you can have unlimited "addon" domains.  So for example, if my main domain is mysite.com, I can do an addon domain called "adifferentsite.com" and it will show up at the URL adifferentsite.com.

 

However, I just realized that the site ALSO shows up at the URL adifferentsite.mysite.com.

 

I had no idea it was doing this until now.  Isn't this bad for SEO, as I feel like this could be seen as duplicate content (i.e. two URLs bring up the exact same website).

 

Maybe this is a question for Host Gator, but figured I'd post here to since I always get good info from the people on this site.  But I am now worried that my sites (i have several that have been up for a while now) are all being penalized as being duplicate content.  I guess I don't know enough about "addon" domains

 

Anybody know anything about this situation that can give me any input?

 

 

[fry2010]

I know of this issue too. Make sure that you do the following:

 

Place <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo 'http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com'.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>" /> in the head section.

This will tell search engines to rank based on the url provided.

 

Of course do not link to the url you do not wish to be indexed.

 

As long as you do this there would be no reason search engines will even find that url.

[galvin]

Thanks fry2010.  I was also thinking about doing a 301 redirect of the adifferentsite.mysite.com URL to the mysite.com URL

 

Do you know which method would be better (i.e. 301 redirect or your canonical suggestion)?  Or does it not really matter, as long as one of them is done

 

 

[fry2010]

deffinatly use the canonical because if someone posts a link to a page in your site and it gets rewritten by that other website, then google will deffinatly have duplicate content of those pages. Its good for things like rss feed links, twitter, facebook etc..

 

But there would be no harm in using 301 as well, not that I can see.

[fry2010]

You could also do something like, if the page request has come from that URL you dont want used, then you could place in the robots metatag NOFOLLOW, NOINDEX. Something like:

 

<?php

  $robots = 'FOLLOW,INDEX';

  if($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] == 'http://www.adifferentsite.example.com')
  $robots = 'NOFOLLOW, NOINDEX';

?>

[galvin]

Great, thanks so much for the info!