Will my addon domains be penalised for duplicate content?

[Wes]

Hi,
Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find any posts on the subject.
I'd be grateful for any advice on a query I have regarding addon domains and the risk of being penalised for duplicate content by the search engines. I have several addon domains set up my main domain account with Eukhost...however, each standalone addon domain can be accessed also by inputting the url for its equivalent subdomain name which is automatically set up at the same time the addon domain is created in cpanel. So if I have an addon domain such as addondomain.com it is also automatically created as a subdomain of the main account, namely addondomain.maindomain.com.
And to add to my confusion the addon domain can also be accessed by two other urls by adding www. before both of the both examples. So any given web site hosting can be accessed by four different urls.
What concerns me is that I've noticed three of the four examples above are being spidered by Google on my various addon domains - so does this not mean there's a serious risk of each web site hosting being seen as four sites by Google with 100% duplicate content?
I hope this makes sense - apologies if I've not described things too clearly.
I found a post here: Rankwell Blog Archive Htaccess for addon domains on another forum which seems to suggest there is a danger of being penalised. Has anyone else any advice they could give be and have they taken the measures suggested in the link above? I've also come across suggestions that 301 redirects are necessary so I'm getting more baffled by the hour. I'd be grateful for a simple step by step guide on what to do as I'm not particularly technical.

Thanks

Wes

[eUKhost.com]

Hi Wes,

People keep on saying that google will penalise for duplicate content, but google has quite intelligent spider and it never creates any problem for the main website hosting. Almost every website hosting is crawled by www as well as without www., but google gives first preference to the website hosting which has more backlinks and previous index record in google cache.

Google will either not display content of your addon domains in search results, or it will give them low priority in comparison to the main website hosting which has more backlinks and old cache record.

[Wes]

Hi,
Thanks for your reply - the problem is my main website hosting (account name) isn't a proper web site hosting as such. I set it up with the aim of eventually making it a content-driven web site hosting but it's currently just a holding page. Meanwhile I've kicked on and set up several addon domains under the main domain which have plenty of content etc and are starting to fare well in the search engines. So when your say: 'Google will either not display content of your addon domains in search results, or it will give them low priority in comparison to the main website hosting' ....that's the worse case scenario for me and the last thing I want. As it is, Google and Yahoo are showing plenty of content from the addon domains in search results - but does my original question mean they could be showing even more. I'd be quite happy for Google to never go anywhere near the main domain as it's effectively just a holding page with no content other than links to the addon domains on it.

Wes

[paul]

Originally Posted by Wes

Hi,
Thanks for your reply - the problem is my main website hosting (account name) isn't a proper web site hosting as such. I set it up with the aim of eventually making it a content-driven web site hosting but it's currently just a holding page. Meanwhile I've kicked on and set up several addon domains under the main domain which have plenty of content etc and are starting to fare well in the search engines. So when your say: 'Google will either not display content of your addon domains in search results, or it will give them low priority in comparison to the main website hosting' ....that's the worse case scenario for me and the last thing I want. As it is, Google and Yahoo are showing plenty of content from the addon domains in search results - but does my original question mean they could be showing even more. I'd be quite happy for Google to never go anywhere near the main domain as it's effectively just a holding page with no content other than links to the addon domains on it.

Wes

In worst case google may identify each add-on domain name with same content and you won't be able to know which addon domains will be penalized for the duplicates but it won't will effect to the main domain name even though linking because as you said your primary domain has no content.

[Wes]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the feedback. It just seems mad that a web site hosting runs the risk of being penalised for duplicate content, when in truth there is no duplicate content really - there is of course only one addon site, but it's accessible through different urls (ie the subdomain url too) giving the impression it''s more than one single site. Hope that makes sense. I assume there are loads of people hosting with Eukhost and other companies who have sites as addons - so I also assume they run the risk of being penalised by the search engines for duplicate content simply because their addon technically shows as another web site hosting too (due to subdomain url). Is the only safe way forward to have a separate account for each domain, which of course would be costly - you would be wasting most of the bandwidth, storage etc etc just having one web site hosting sitting on each full account.
Thanks
Wes

[paul]

Wes, if there is no duplicate content then nothing to worry and as I said earlier it will never have problem with your main website hosting.

[Wes]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for that. It's just the link I gave earlier, namely Rankwell Blog Archive Htaccess for addon domains and several other forums seem to suggest there is a danger of being penalised because it appears to the search engines that your have two sites with duplicated content when the spiders crawl them - namely addondomain.com and addondomain.maindomain.com, even though it's actually only one site.

Thanks

Wes

[Wes]

Hi,

Came across this post on an affilates forum...they discuss the problem of a web site hosting appearing as two sites to search engines just because they can be accessed through different urls (www.mysite,com and mysite.com) See here:

What is a 301 redirect? - Affiliate Marketing

Also, regarding the risk of being penalised...
Matt Cutts of Google itself seems to be suggesting the need for 301 redirects here:

Search Engine Optimization advice: url canonicalization

Cheers

Wes

[paul]

A zero meta refresh could be one of the alternative of 301 redirect in certain situation which works like a 301 redirect, I think this paragraph would help you in your case; sebastians-pamphlets.com/google-and-yahoo-treat-undelayed-meta-refresh-as-301-redirect/

Matt also refer 301s, and 302s, and even Meta Refreshes in a interview last year;

"So, something like that could certainly be promising, because it lets you keep the direct nature of a link while still sending a signal to someone. In general, Google does a relatively good job of following the 301s, and 302s, and even Meta Refreshes and JavaScript. Typically what we don't do would be to follow a chain of redirects that goes through a robots.txt that is itself forbidden". Ref; stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml

[Wes]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the feedback - much appreciated.

Wes

[charlesgan]

main concern is not to have duplicate content, all robots generated content... search engine definitely don't like these.

Make your content useful for human. That's most important

[Wes]

Hi Charles,
Thanks for the reply. I'm fully aware about not having duplicate content on a site or material plagiarised from another site. That's not really what I'm talking about though.
As mentiioned at the start of the post my concern is about the fact any addon domain under your main account domain can be accessed by several urls therefore appearing to the search engines as though they are separate sites - which of course they are not - and therefore they will appear as having 100% duplicate content.
For example an addon domain www.addondomain.com points to addondomain.mydomain.com
However, it can be accessed by several urls
-www.mydomain.com/addondomain
-mydomain.com/addondomain
-addondomain.mydomain.com
-www.addondomain.mydomain.com
-www.addondomain.com
-addondomain.com

I appreciate the replies of others on this post saying there is no risk of Google and other search engines seeing this as several sites and therefore duplicate content when spidering.
However I keep coming across more and more sites (several which are well respected) which say the contrary and warn of an addon domain will likely be penalised unless a .htaccess file is added to your site.

Comments I've come across on sites include: 'Having add-on domains does influence things from an Search Engine Optimization perspective as your add-on domain can be reached by different URL's. This means there are potential duplicate content issues when you're using add-on domains.'

'For those of you that make use of add-on domains on your hosting accoumt, its important to setup an .htaccess file to redirect any visitors or bots who find their way to one of the subdomains., to avoid duplicate content issues.'

There are dozens of sites discussing this matter and they all say it's important to takes to set up htaccess to avoid being penalised - You'll see what I mean if you look at any of the example links below:

Rankwell Blog Archive Htaccess for addon domains

Addon Domains - Solving duplicate content issue using .htaccess

Explanation about Addon Domain and using Modrewrite on it Reaper-X .:[ ID ]:.

Hosting multiple websites on one account - addon domains - 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums
(see bottom of page on this link)

Google Canonicalization Errors: The Dreaded Missing WWW Syndrome

Thanks

Wes

[eUKhost.com]

Hi Wes,

You can simply make one account on Google Webmaster Central and block all unwanted URL's that you don't wish to be indexed. Google Webmasters section has another feature through which you can tell them which URL should be considered main URL of your domain and what others should be ignored.

I guess this should be the best solution for your concerns as 20 different will say 50 different things about Google indexing policies and it would be much better to trust tools given by google itself

[Wes]

Hi EukHost person,
Thanks for that - sounds like a good way forward to me. I use the Google webmaster tools quite a bit, but must admit I hadn't noticed the option to nominate a specific url to be spidered etc. Thanks again - I'll give it a try - saves messing around with htaccess option others have talked about.

Wes

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by Wes

Hi EukHost person,
Thanks for that - sounds like a good way forward to me. I use the Google webmaster tools quite a bit, but must admit I hadn't noticed the option to nominate a specific url to be spidered etc. Thanks again - I'll give it a try - saves messing around with htaccess option others have talked about.

Wes

I should have mentioned this in my previous post. Fortunately Charles re-opened this old thread and you got what you were looking for

[eUKhost.com]

Hi Wes,

I've managed to find perfect explanation for you from Google itself. Please refer following URL :-

Duplicate content - Webmaster Help Center

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.

[Wes]

Hi,
Thanks for the additional advice -much appreciated.

Wes