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My webhost gives you two URLs for your website:

  1. the URL on your shared server, which is something like usr283725992783.webhost.com and
  2. your domain URL, which is www.example.com

Google is indexing both of these URLs, but obviously I only want www.example.com to be indexed.

I can't add "nofollow" tags to usr283725992783.webhost.com because that URL serves the same files as www.example.com.

How can I only make Google not follow usr283725992783.webhost.com and keep following www.example.com?

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  • Why do you care if the search results end up at your website? I would love to have doubled search results for an important site.
    – Steve
    Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 12:09
  • Many reasons. One, I don't want anyone seeing any more "private" server info than they need to. Two, I use things in PHP such as $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] and I don't want to write the code to check for two possibilities (the domain and the server url). And three, it just looks bad having some cryptic URL in the search results. I also don't believe duplicate content on different domains is good for your search rankings.
    – Gavin
    Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 12:23

2 Answers 2

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In your case, you will most probably have duplicate content issues and thus indexing issues for your site.

To avoid duplicate content issues with search engines, you can add a rel="canonical" tag (how to use it on Google support) in all your pages to specify the right version of pages is the one from www.example.com.

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  • Zistoloen, sorry, I don't think you understood my question. www.example.com is the same as usr283725992783.webhost.com. They both load the exact same files, except www.example.com is simple a domain pointed to usr283725992783.webhost.com. If I changed the .htaccess file, it will affect both usr283725992783.webhost.com and www.example.com because it is the same files.
    – Gavin
    Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 12:18
  • @Gavin: you're right, I have edited my answer.
    – Zistoloen
    Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 13:06
  • Thanks, that seems to be what I need to do. In PHP I'll check which site is being loaded and display the canonical tag if it's usr283725992783.webhost.com.
    – Gavin
    Commented Jun 7, 2014 at 8:43
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I thing going for 301 redirect using .htaccess will make google not follow this link.Or you can use robots.txt.

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  • Read the first comment of the OP under my answer and please update your answer.
    – Zistoloen
    Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 20:45

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