Google indexing mail server

[Joe Blow]

This isn't specifically about Xenforo, but as it's happening to my Xenforo forum I thought I'd post it in here.

I've noticed that URLs are appearing in Google's search results like this:

mail.mydomain.com/threads/thread-url/

I'm sure this would appear to Google to be duplicate content as the regular thread is also indexed, so it may be having a negative effect on my Google rankings.

Does anyone know how to stop these URLs from being indexed by Google? I only want the one version of a forum thread to be available in the search results.

TIA for any assistance.

 

[Mike]

You probably just want to do something to ensure that you enforce domain-level URL canonicalization. In 1.x, this is generally done via .htaccess or similar (there are instructions in the FAQ). In 2.0, you can do that or enable the "Enable board URL canonicalization" option (provided your URL option above it is 100% correct).

 

[Joe Blow]

You probably just want to do something to ensure that you enforce domain-level URL canonicalization. In 1.x, this is generally done via .htaccess or similar (there are instructions in the FAQ). In 2.0, you can do that or enable the "Enable board URL canonicalization" option (provided your URL option above it is 100% correct).

Thanks for the help Mike. Can you please point me to the instructions in the FAQ you mentioned. I can't seem to find them.

 

[Mike]

Roughly speaking, #19 here: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/frequently-asked-questions.5183/post-180456

You'd want something along the lines of:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com$1 [R=301,L]