Domain alias google index

Kenny Deblaere asked on April 10, 2017 10:27

Hello

I'm having a rare problem on my website. It has the following setup:

Website domain

With some domain aliases:

These domains all share the same content, but have small differences on the homepage (for example: Logo). The problem is, when searching for these domain aliases, the google indexes are wrong, these subsites are different offices, so there is a bit competition between them.

I've done some things to fix this problem:

  1. There is a redirect from www to non-www (Kentico setting)
  2. Each homepage has it's canonical tag, referring to the non-www tag.
  3. I've added the office-name into titles on the homepage, to avoid duplicate content.

Only Google search mixes up these sites, Bing does it right. Just for the record, I give some search results:

Reizen Staelens

  1. Google - reizenstaelens.be: This gives the wrong site (Sedona travel), but the second link is correct.
  2. Google - site:reizenstaelens.be: The site is correct, but the title and description are from another site.
  3. Google - chace:reizenstaelens.be: Here the same problem, it links to Sedonatravel.
  4. Bing - reizenstaelens: Correct
  5. Bing - reizenstaelens.be: Correct

Vivatours

  1. Google - vivatours.be: shows correct site, but wrong description
  2. Google - site:vivatours.be: Correct
  3. Google - site:www.vivatours.be: The same as the first issue.
  4. Google - cache:vivatours.be: links again to flyaway reizen.

These are the two common issues I'm having with the Google index. Can you help me getting the right results in Google?

Kind regards

Kenny

Recent Answers

Brenden Kehren answered on April 10, 2017 15:48

I believe this is strictly a setup issue. How is your content tree setup? How do you have your master pages working? Some macros and C# methods use the main domain set in the Site definition to generate those URLs so you need to be careful how you set this up. Maybe post a bit more of your setup and how that is all working.

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Kenny Deblaere answered on April 10, 2017 15:55

Hi Brenden

Every page is using the same setup. To get the correct items, I use macro's, for example to get the officeTitle, I'm using a Macro which resolves the correct content, given by the url.

The odd thing is, my websites are always showing the correct things, it's only a Google problem.

Do you need further information, otherwise, let me know?

Kind regards

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Brenden Kehren answered on April 10, 2017 17:56

Then you need to create a dynamic xml sitemap and submit it to Google/Bing to get the proper indexing done. This will help.

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Anton Grekhovodov answered on April 10, 2017 19:14

Hi Kenny,
Title and Description tags are suggestions for what the search engines should display in the results. Google may try to generate more relevant title/description for search query based on content.
Articles to read:
WHY DOESN'T GOOGLE USE MY TITLE TAG AND META DESCRIPTION IN SEARCH RESULTS?
Create good titles and snippets in Search Results
Webmaster Guidelines

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Kenny Deblaere answered on April 11, 2017 15:28

Brenden: I've created a sitemap and a robots file, working for every domain alias.

Anton: I've already followed these instructions and these were no help.

Kind regards

Kenny

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Brenden Kehren answered on April 11, 2017 15:40

So I viewed the source of all sites and there is not a canonical tag in any of them that I found. Secondly, I'm guessing your properties of the site and their aliases are not configured properly. Assuming you have the sitemap and robots files setup and submitted properly, your configuration has to be incorrect. As I look at your sitemap(s) and robots.txt files, I see you have your language code in the URL but your not specifying this when in your sitemap or robots files. Could this be part of the problem? What is the default language of your site setup to be? What do your aliases redirect to?

As I stated in my first answer, if you post more info on your configuration it could be worthwhile. Right now we're all taking a stab in the dark.

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