CentOS docs - Apr 2010 - www.centos.org and the wildcard dns

hi guys,

At the moment there is a www.centos.org site. There is also a wildcard 
dns setup that directs anything.centos.org to www.centos.org's content

This has a couple of 'issues' with SEO and google sepcifically. The 
reason we have such low page rank is that google marks all of this as 
duplicate content. I am sure there are other search engines that do as 
well ( Bing has a policy of marking down duplicates as well ).

So, what I'd like to propose is to either drop the wildcard dns 
completely, or setup a new vhost for the wildcard that isnt 
www.centos.org. What we could then do is either present people with a 
list of options on destinations they might be interested in. eg:

- www.centos.org
- wiki.centos.org
- bugs.centos.org
- mirror.centos.org
- isolist.centos.org

thoughts ?


-- 
Karanbir Singh
kbsingh at karan.org | http://www.karan.org/ | twitter.com/kbsingh
ICQ: 2522219      | Yahoo IM: z00dax      | Gtalk: z00dax
GnuPG Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc

Karanbir Singh wrote:
> hi guys,
>
> At the moment there is a www.centos.org site. There is also a wildcard 
> dns setup that directs anything.centos.org to www.centos.org's content
>
> This has a couple of 'issues' with SEO and google sepcifically. The
> reason we have such low page rank is that google marks all of this as 
> duplicate content. I am sure there are other search engines that do as 
> well ( Bing has a policy of marking down duplicates as well ).
>
> So, what I'd like to propose is to either drop the wildcard dns 
> completely, or setup a new vhost for the wildcard that isnt 
> www.centos.org. What we could then do is either present people with a 
> list of options on destinations they might be interested in. eg:
>
> - www.centos.org
> - wiki.centos.org
> - bugs.centos.org
> - mirror.centos.org
> - isolist.centos.org
>
> thoughts ?
>
>
>   
I'd make a dedicatet vhost with the following index.html (read between 
the lines, please...):


Welcome, beloved user ! You've reached nothing.centos.org which 
unfortunately does not point to valid content. What we can help you with is:
- www.centos.org
- wiki.centos.org
- bugs.centos.org
- mirror.centos.org
- isolist.centos.org
- dev.centos.org

Thank you for your interest in CentOS !

On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 15:57 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> hi guys,
> 
> At the moment there is a www.centos.org site. There is also a wildcard 
> dns setup that directs anything.centos.org to www.centos.org's content
> 
> This has a couple of 'issues' with SEO and google sepcifically. The
> reason we have such low page rank is that google marks all of this as 
> duplicate content. I am sure there are other search engines that do as 
> well ( Bing has a policy of marking down duplicates as well ).
---
I do not think that's the whole problem:  Take into consideration this;
site:wiki.centos.org kernelbuild  
Use that at both bing.com and google.com.  Bing wins hands down.

BTW when was the last bing crawl date? Today?

John

On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 15:57 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:

I answered my own question Bing crawled it on 4-10 2010!

John

From: "Karanbir Singh", Friday, April 16, 2010 8:57 AM
> ...
> At the moment there is a www.centos.org site. There is also a wildcard
> dns setup that directs anything.centos.org to www.centos.org's content
> ...
  Unless I'm missing something, http://yadda.centos.org doesn't
redirect, it
displays a copy of the (www.)centos.org content.

  I'm not that knowledgeable about SEO stuff, but wouldn't a redirect be
better?

  Assuming an Apache setup, adding something like a catch-all virtual host 
after any other centos.org host definitions.  I prefer URL's without the www
unless there is a good reason...

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAlias *.centos.org
  Redirect permanent / http://centos.org
</VirtualHost>

  That should get the browser client to notice and change where it is going.