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Hosting Problem - Duplicate Content

by Fernando Veloso
14 replies
Hi guys

I know some of you are top specialists in hosting. I really need your opinion.

Ok, here we go: Imagine sites A, B and C. They were on hosting company 1. Then, last year, I changed them to company 2.

But I didn't delete nothing in company 1 cause hosting account was ending the next day.

The problem:

A couple days ago I was trying to configure one of these sites back in company 1 (SEO wise movement) and couldn't do it - always a error - "That site is already configured"....

So, today company 1 hosting manager tells me there was a old server with these 3 sites configured. They didn't delete it.

WTF!!???

Questions:

  1. Is this normal behavior by hosting company?
  2. This problem creates duplicate content to SE's?
  3. Should webmasters delete everything before changing host, so hosting company can't keep files this way?
  4. Where can I check for similar issues with this hosting company? (Bet there is a way to check is domain name is configured in 2 or more places)

Thank you!

#content #duplicate #hosting #problem
  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Just had the confirmation from hosting manager: 3 sites were involved.

    Curiously all 3 sites have NO rankings at all and doing a copy/paste of small text show no results.

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    • Profile picture of the author Mar
      Not sure I have the full answer to this but I have encountered problems in the past when I did something similar. When moving domain to new hosting company, I only leave the old files in place for a few days till I'm sure the domain propagation is 100% done. Then I delete the old account.

      If duplicate content was the only issue, maybe it wouldn't be too bad - but this can impact your email service for the domain as well - and that can be really ugly.

      Can hosting company 1 delete your old records from their system? - even if you go to hosting company 3 :O) - it would be good practice to have the old info deleted.

      M
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      • Profile picture of the author sanssecret
        This is something I hadn't even considered when I moved hosts. I just assumed the sites at the old host would be deleted. Why would they not? Otherwise, they're just taking up server space aren't they?
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        • Profile picture of the author AFI
          Originally Posted by sanssecret View Post

          This is something I hadn't even considered when I moved hosts. I just assumed the sites at the old host would be deleted. Why would they not? Otherwise, they're just taking up server space aren't they?
          I have moved servers within my own host twice in the last 6 month which puts my sites on 3 different servers. I noticed the other day that I accidentally logged into one of my old servers and all of my sites were still there but it doesn't matter.

          THEY ARE NOT ONLINE IF YOU ARE NOT POINTING YOUR NAME SERVER TO THEM.
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          • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
            Originally Posted by AFI View Post

            THEY ARE NOT ONLINE IF YOU ARE NOT POINTING YOUR NAME SERVER TO THEM.
            I understand. I really do.

            But problem is: something is putting these sites in "bad mood" with Google cause all of them show no updates for new unique content.

            So I guess something "deeper" could be going on.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Oh S%$#

    ALL the sites I had in there and changed to Hostgator, show ZERO results for new pages of unique content.

    NADA!

    This is a really a BIG problem. S%$#!

    P.S.: I need support by a hosting specialist. Anyone?
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  • Profile picture of the author AFI
    Are you using the same domains for these sites? If so then the old sites won't even be online anymore because you'll have the nameservers not pointed to the old server, you'll have them pointed to the new server.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mar
      You have backups of the files?? If so, I'd ask server support to delete all instances of your domain(s) on their servers - old, new, nearly new - and start again. Not resolving this properly now is going to leave a shambles. It will be worth the few hours of pain to get it right.

      M
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    All sites I moved to new hosting show NO results for new unique content pages. New hosting is Hostgator and sites have been there for months, over a year probably.

    I am trying to understand HOW and WHY these sites have no rankings or new content indexed.

    Its a hell of a coincidence this happens JUST with sites I moved from them to new hosting.

    My question to experts is: Can a old configuration penalize this way? It seems obvious to me this is happening to all these sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author AFI
    Sounds like something with the web cache or something. Why are you not asking your hosting support?
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    • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
      Originally Posted by AFI View Post

      Sounds like something with the web cache or something. Why are you not asking your hosting support?
      AFI, beware these sites were moved a long time ago, months ago. As for their support, well, can't say it's the best...
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  • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
    Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post


    1. Is this normal behavior by hosting company?
    2. This problem creates duplicate content to SE's?
    3. Should webmasters delete everything before changing host, so hosting company can't keep files this way?
    4. Where can I check for similar issues with this hosting company? (Bet there is a way to check is domain name is configured in 2 or more places)
    1. No; it's not really normal behaviour, if you've cancelled a service. What business would want to continue providing a service after the customer has cancelled their contract/agreement and stopped paying?
    2. No. Like Jennifer said, the old copy of your site probably won't even be known to (or indexed by) Google, anymore. In any case, even if Google did somehow re-locate and re-index the old copy of your site, at a completely different URL (say, a web-host's "preview URL"; e.g. htxp://server6.whatever.com/~yoursite/) both copies/instances would be on a different site/domain name, so it'd be syndicated content, not duplicated content. That probably hasn't happened, though.
    3. Well, when web-hosts remove an account, its contents are usually automatically deleted along with it. Even so, most (decent) web-hosts take data/account backups to be stored off-site via one means or another, so even if you delete your files they'll often still have backups that won't have been removed, I expect (although, when I was a web-host, I used to immediately delete any and all backups I'd taken on their behalf, at the same time as removing their account).
    4. I don't really get what you're asking. If you re-configured and updated the DNS / nameservers to which your domain points, when you moved hosts, then the domain is no longer configured to work or utilise your old hosting at all.
    I really don't think there is much of an issue in the way you're thinking there is, and struggle to see any relationship between there being 2 instances of your site online, and neither of them being in Google's index.

    Is your site based on Wordpress? Are you sure you've chosen for it to be indexable at your new host? Checked to make sure there is no block in place within some ".htaccess" or "robots.txt" file, or something?
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    • Profile picture of the author Mar
      I must admit, you got me confused; do you still have the duplicate domain issue on the server which currently has your site(s)???

      The reason I ask is because I know from server admin one place I have hosting that this can cause issues - this from their forum:


      Resellers are asked not to have domains/accounts setup which use:

      * fake/dummy domain names
      * expired domain names
      * domain names not hosted on the server
      * domains already setup in a different reseller account with us


      This is because with these invalid domains in our DNS system it can and in 80-90% of cases, will cause problems because our DNS system will assume these domains are real and hosted on our server.

      The cPanel interface has safeguards built in to try and protect against invalid domains being parked/added to cPanel accounts but with the WHM reseller panel we put our trust in our resellers to only setup valid domains, hence this announcement.
      Even if Google's cache of your website is out of date or current, you may cause problems on the server if your current host has another reseller account with the domain(s) listed.

      M
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  • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
    This will be one of those things staring you in the face but just can't see it. If the nameserver has been changed and propageted then this is probably nothing to do with your hosting company. Somewhere, something is probably pointing to the wrong place. To be honest, I don't fully get what you are trying to explain. Is there a database involved or static pages?
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