XML sitemap, duplicated content and SEO with oa_domains [#2409843]

Hi,

When I use oa_domains with few different domains, I can check content at admin/content, the links are with different domains correctly with the patch (https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/oa_domain-subspace-inherit-parent-21...) applied; however, I can access every spaces/contents with the wrong domains by type it directly in the address in browser, with path. (if I have right to access the spaces or the spaces are public)

For example, you can access both domain1.example.com/subspace1 and site2.great.com/subspace1
Or domain1.example.com/subspace1/document1 and site2.great.com/subspace1/docuemnt1

About domain1.example.com and site2.great.com you can access by the path alias. For example,
site2.great.com/domain1_example domain1.example.com/sites2_great

Does oa_domains create duplicated contents and cause problem with SEO? Is possible to solve this? Or there is no issue here since the search engine will never find the wrong content?

thanks.

hosais

Comments

Comment #1

mpotter CreditAttribution: mpotter commented 19 January 2015 at 14:16

Keep in mind that the Default Domain that you set in the oa_domains module is the base domain that can be used to access the entire site. So yes, if this is "domain1" then you will be able to access all content via "domain1". That is just how it works. There isn't any way to prevent the default domain from being used to access the site since that would break on any non-space pages.

As you said, search engines should not find any of this duplicated content. What you can also always do is ensure that every space has a unique domain so you aren't using domain1 for anything, then set the .htaccess file to prevent any access to domain1 at all.

You could also set .htaccess to prevent using domain1 to access your site2.great.com content. There isn't any way for Open Atrium to control your .htaccess file automatically so you need to find somebody who understands how to use this file to block search engines.

Comment #2

hosais CreditAttribution: hosais commented 19 January 2015 at 20:21

using .htaccess is not prefect but acceptable solution. With a special logic/policy applied it should work. Thank you for the hint.

I just have one thing to clarify. In my observation, the base domain is nothing but a default domain. That is if the custom domain is not set (and there is no parent with costumed domain), then its domain would be base domain. In the access control point of view, the two domains are the same. So it would be: you can use both domain1.example.com and site1.great.com to all the content (of course if the user has the access right).

However, in general, this is OK. The normal user will not have trouble with this. In the normal situation, oa_domain works very well. In my tests, it shows the links with correct domains (with the mentioned patch). Thank you for the great idea.

hosais

Comment #3

hosais CreditAttribution: hosais commented 28 March 2015 at 18:35

Hi,

I noticed another issue today about using oa_domains with XML sitemap module. If we include the domain content to sitemap, the domain added in XML sitemap for search engine would be the main domain instead the space domain. This will encourage the search engine to have information with the wrong domain; therefore, it has a serious issue with SEO.