Question

A few days ago we replaced our web site with an updated version. The original site’s content was migrated to http://backup.example.com. Search engines do not know about the old site, and I do not want them to know.

While we were in the process of updating our site, Google crawled the old version.

Now when using Google to search for our web site, we get results for both the new and old sites (e.g., http://www.example.com and http://backup.example.com).

Here are my questions:

1. Can I update the backup site content with the new content? Then we can get rid all of old content. My concern is that Google will lower our page ranking due to duplicate content.
2. If I prevent the old site from being accessed, how long will it take for the information to clear out of Google’s search results?
3. Can I use google disallow to block Google from the old web site.

Answer 1

You should probably put a robots.txt file in your backup site and tell robots not to crawl it at all. Google will obey the restrictions though not all crawlers will. You might want to check out the options available to you at Google’s WebMaster Central. Ask Google and see if they will remove the errant links for you from their data.