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robots.txt question


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My site is available through two means:

 

1) the correct way, through www.mysite.com

 

2) Through my hosting account www.myhostingdomain.com/my_shop_directory

 

Mysite.com points to the my_shop_directory on my hosting domain. Obviously, I only want mysite.com indexed by Google. If I used robots.txt to disallow myhostingdomain.com/my_shop_directory, would that impact mysite.com at all?

 

I hope that is understandable!

 

Thanks

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Hi,

 

It looks like your configuration file is setup wrong but in some way correct if it`s working.

You need to change the domain name in bouth configuration file so that a visitor opens your shop ""www.mysite.com" he stay`s there.

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Thanks @@imop, but you've misunderstood me.

 

My site is working perfectly, no issues in the config files or anything. I'll try to explain it a bit better.

 

My shop is "mysite.com", however the domain "mysite.com" points to "myhosting.com/myshop". The same goes for every page, "mysite.com/product" is really "myhosting.com/myshop/product". The customer only ever sees "mysite.com", but "myhosting.com/myshp" also exists.

 

I do not want Google to index the "myhosting.com" domain, but I obviously do want it to index the "mysite.com" domain. My query is, because "mysite.com" is really "myhosting.com/myshop", if I use robots.txt to disallow "myhosting.com/myshop", will that also disallow "mysite.com"?

 

Is that any clearer?? So hard to explain in text!

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If a shop adress remains "mysite.com" for your site if a visitor will look for any page then it`s ok to disallow robots look for "myhosting.com/myshop"

 

But if a visitor gose to "mysite.com" and is redirected to "myhosting.com/myshop", then it`s not a good idea.

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So you're saying that visitors are getting to your shop through http://server.host.com/yourAccount/?'>http://server.host.com/yourAccount/? If they're only undesirable bots (i.e., not Google, etc.) you might be able to block them through robots.txt. However, the right way would be to use /.htaccess (assuming you're on an Apache server) to redirect visitors to your desired domain name:

 

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^server\.host\.com  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^yourAccount/?(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/$1  [R=301,L]
RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^mysite\.com  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/$1  [R=301,L]

 

This assumes that http://server.host.com/yourAccount/ actually comes through your /.htaccess and is recognized as the domain name and URI. If it doesn't, no telling what's going on.

 

Notes:

 

1. Ill-mannered bots will ignore robots.txt anyway, but they can't ignore .htaccess.

2. If you ever need to access your site via server.host.com, you might be blocked.

 

Moral of the story: never give out your temporary domain (server.host.com/yourAccount) to the public -- always use your proper domain name.

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Thanks Phil. As far as I know, real visitors never went to the hosting domain, it was just for about half an hour as I was changing hosts I had accidentally linked to the hosting rather than shop domain and Googlebot found it. But using a robots.txt seems to have fixed that, so all is good now. All links point where they should and Googlebot is on the right site.

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