Question

We have a dev server that has managed to become indexed by Google. Page 2 of a relevant search on Google will throw up links to the dev server instead of the live one (with the same content.)

However, we have now locked the dev server down behind IP address restrictions and htpasswd authentication, so any inbound traffic from google will result in a dead end.

Is there a way that we can specifically fine tune the search results ending in the dev site out of Google’s index?

Should we be putting in specific redirects for each of the targets of Google results?

If we did specific redirects, would these take precedence over the security settings and would we still be able to browse the site in dev mode without being redirected to the live site?

My thought is that perhaps the best solution is to relocate the whole dev instance to another subdomain and leave this domain dormant but with all the correct redirects in place for Search results.

Answer 1

Something like this in .htaccess

It is untested, so you should really use it as an idea

use it in dev directory

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} google\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://live.server.com/$1 [L]