Redirect, Forward or What to avoid duplicate content

[3dcristywisty]

I have been trying to find a way to have our old website forwarded to the new website. Previously we were with hostway and our website was set up as "store. mystore.com". Now with 3d cart it is just "mystore.com".

My issue is that google has us listed as "store.mystore.com" and when you click the link its broken. I had a subdomain set up with 3dcart for "store.mystore.com" and wanted it forwarded to "mystore.com", but apparently all they can do is a redirect. With the redirect when you type "store.mystore.com" it visually appears like my 3d cart site, but the address bar still shows as "store.mystore.com". I *want* it to be forwarded to "mystore.com" so eventually the old searches and bookmarked pages will be no longer show up in the search engines.

Does that make sense? If I keep both address, wont I be penalized by google for having duplicate content? Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? :confused:

Any suggestions on how to resolve this would be appreciated!

[jwm2]

I have been trying to find a way to have our old website forwarded to the new website. Previously we were with hostway and our website was set up as "store. mystore.com". Now with 3d cart it is just "mystore.com".

My issue is that google has us listed as "store.mystore.com" and when you click the link its broken. I had a subdomain set up with 3dcart for "store.mystore.com" and wanted it forwarded to "mystore.com", but apparently all they can do is a redirect. With the redirect when you type "store.mystore.com" it visually appears like my 3d cart site, but the address bar still shows as "store.mystore.com". I *want* it to be forwarded to "mystore.com" so eventually the old searches and bookmarked pages will be no longer show up in the search engines.

Does that make sense? If I keep both address, wont I be penalized by google for having duplicate content? Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? :confused:

Any suggestions on how to resolve this would be appreciated!

You should be able to 301 redirect from the subdomain to the main domain, but you may have to get someone from support to help you or edit the .htaccess file yourself. Just google "301 redirect subdomain to main domain" and you'll find plenty of good information on doing this. You'll also want to sign up with google webmaster tools if you have not already and tell google how you want your site crawled.

[3dcristywisty]

I asked tech support (before I posted the questions) to do it and they keep telling me you cant redirect a subdomain. I thought maybe I was explaining what I wanted to them wrong, it seemed like a simple request. I will try again -- thanks.

[piaf]

I think tech support is correct. A subdomain is seen as a completely different domain from the original domain as far as search engines are concerned. And since you can't use 301's to redirect from one domain to a different domain, I don't think you'll be able to do it in your situation either. You might want to try researching "redirecting subdomains" in Google to see if you can find the solution to your problem.