www1 www2

[hilary]

Hi

I would really appreciate your advice on my issue.

In the past we had used server load balancing and therefore had

www1.mydomainname.com
www2.mydomainname.com
www3.mydomainname.com
www.mydomain.com

I have asked our developer if we could somehome hide these from humans and search engines and he said that we no longer use server load balancing.

Why then are we still appearing in serps?

Problem 1:
In serps any one of the above urls can be displayed ( depending on the search term )
Problem 2:
Using any of the above urls you go to our site without being redirected to www.mydomain.com - Is this a severe duplicate content issue ?

Should we block www1. www2. www3 for bots?

Our developer says that the problem is with old links- but even if we delete these 'old' links surely we should still stop sites from being indexed ?

[JohnW]

>Is this a severe duplicate content issue ?

Yes.

>Should we block www1. www2. www3 for bots

No, 301 redirect them to the www version.

[hilary]

Hi

Just to be sure ....this would not be seen as cloaking by Google ?

Also you say not to block is this so I would not loose any gained link juice or is there another reason

Thank you very much

[JohnW]

Yes this preserves link juice and cures the duplicate content problem. This has nothing to do with cloaking.