Index page duplicated

[JoeZychik]

My index page was accidentally duplicated by a listserve at Kent State. For years the site has scored from 1-5 in searches for sex addiction, sexual addiction, etc. After the accidental dupe it didn't make the first 500.

I contacted Kent State after I discovered the problem. They removed the duplicated page from their server last week. I also contacted Google. Am still not showing up in the searches. The last time my page was Googled was May 8, I believe.

Could you give me an idea of about how long it will take for the duplication penalty to be removed?

I can also take pages from other sections of my site and add them to my index page. Would that make any difference?

Thank you,

Joe Zychik

[mvandemar]

It sounds like you are making a connection that might not be there. Is the Kent State page showing up instead of your page?

-Michael

[JoeZychik]

Yes. Search "Sexual addiction is more deceptive than most other addictions" Kent State page shows up number 1. Mine shows up number 20. The quote is a direct quote from my site written in January 1999. The link to Kent State is now blank. Before it was a duplication of my index.html page.

thank you,

Joe Zychik

[mvandemar]

Actually, when I search for that, this page is what comes up #1 now, and this page is not an exact copy of yours. You are right, you are being buried (your homepage is, anyways) underneath the filter.

Your subpages are still showing, so that's a plus (you are #2 for [sex addiction counseling]). The bad part is that [the Kent State page] is supplemental now. The last time it was visited was Apr 6th. I think your best results would come if Google revisited them, and saw that the page was gone now. I would maybe ask some people to drop some medium powered links at it until it gets respidered. I don't know if you would want to mess with the content of your current homepage, since that was what was (and should be again, once this gets straightened out) ranking before.

I think your best bet would be if the Kent people would agree to 301 that dead page to your homepage, but I have no idea how willing they would be to do that. Wouldn't hurt to ask though.

-Michael

[JoeZychik]

Thanks Michael. I put in a request to have their page removed from Google's index using the Google option for this issue. Request went in on Sat.

Kent State was very cooperative. I'll give them a call.

My search still shows their page coming up before mine.

Will keep you updated when this finally plays out. Btw, do you know what the effect will be in the long run?

best,

Joe

[mvandemar]

Will keep you updated when this finally plays out. Btw, do you know what the effect will be in the long run?


Unfortunately, no, there is no way to know for sure... but I can tell you that I did have a page that someone caused me to inadvertently hijack myself with eventually restored.

I run my html pages as php, so if you send the bot to my homepage with a querystring, the homepage is returned under a separate URL. Someone linked to me with the following querystring (which actually did nothing):

http://www.mydomain.com/?referrer=urgentclick

Causing me to duplicate my own homepage. As soon as it got indexed I was buried under the duplicate content filter. I, however, could not risk removing the page via the webmaster tools, since there is no tech support with that, and no one to tell me if removing a script with parameters would remove every instance of the root script or not (well, I could have risked it... but don't really think it would have been wise).

Since it was just this one instance, what I did was included the following code in the top of the page:


$referrer=$_GET["referrer"];
if($referrer!=""){
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.bettermortgagerefinancing.com/");
exit();
}


It took a while for G to finally acknowledge that the dup had been 301'd, over a month iirc, but once it had things straightened out fairly quick.

Others, though, still seem to be suffering from having the same issue:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl%3Areferrer%3Durgentclick

Good luck to you.

-Michael