

How WPEngine Is Failboating Your SEO and Leaking Your Information - mikeyur
http://auditwp.com/wp-engine-seo-failboat/

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smartbear
This is the Founder of WP Engine.

The main points in the article are factually incorrect, but some of it is in
fact excellent feedback that we're going to act on.

First, on staging areas, it is incorrect that they are counted as duplicate
content, because we force a "deny robots everything" robots.txt file on
staging. Using the example from the article of our TorqueMag website:
[http://torque.staging.wpengine.com/robots.txt](http://torque.staging.wpengine.com/robots.txt)

It's true that some bots will ignore robots.txt, but all the major search
engines that matter for SEO, which is the point of the article, do honor it.
Some -- including Google! -- will _scan_ it anyway, but it doesn't count for
duplicate content. Matt Cutts has been extremely clear on this point,
publicly.

Second, on duplicate content on the WP Engine domains (e.g.
torque.wpengine.com), again what was stated is factually incorrect _for
Google_ but _is_ a good point for some other search engines. Here's why:

Google maintains a set of root domains that they know are companies that do
exactly what we and many other hosting companies do. Included in that list are
WordPress.com, SquareSpace, and us. When they detect "duplicate content" on
subdomains from that list, they know that's not actually duplicate content.
You can see it in Google Search, but it's not counted against you.

We have had a dialog directly with Matt Cutts on this point, so this is not
conjecture, but fact.

However, the suggestion from the article that it's better to 301 that domain
is still _also_ very valid. Also, not all search engines are aware of this
scenario, and thus one of the take-aways we have from this article is that we
should auto-force robots.txt for the XYZ.wpengine.com domains just as we do
for the staging domains, so that other search engines won't be confused.

So in the end, we came away with a good idea of how to improve. It's a shame
the point had to be made in the manner that it was, and intermixed with FUD.

~~~
Baustin
Thanks for the response here, Jason. So, just to confirm, you're saying it is
best to delete the original xyz.wpengine.com domain and add that as a redirect
under our main domain name - in my case blog.smartbear.com (you may have come
across it before).

Thanks again for keeping everything in context here.

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eli
This seems like someone with an axe to grind.

The SEO issues identified seem incredibly minor and the "leaking personal
information" apparently refers to the fact that if you use WP-Engine to
publish a prerelease version of your site on the internet... that means it's
published on the internet.

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evunveot
> _To Google, these images aren’t on your site, they are on - wpengine.netdna-
> cdn.com_

I'm curious why the OP thinks that matters. The only thing I can think of is
that you don't necessarily benefit if another site links to or hotlinks a
particular image of yours (though I wouldn't be surprised if Google recognizes
where the image originally appeared and does give credit). And it seems like
any minimally reputable site that wanted to use your image would download and
rehost it themselves.

> _The problem is you have effectively orphaned all of your images to a
> worthless subdomain on NetDNA-CDN.com, no bueno if you’re trying to get some
> image traffic from Google._

How does that prevent you from getting traffic? If an image on your page comes
up in image search, Google still shows your site's domain and links to your
page for everything except the "View Image" button, and if someone clicks
that, they just want to download your image and presumably don't care about
your actual site at all.

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tribe2012
I've spoken to a former Googler that was on the search team, and he said the
duplicate content isn't as big of a deal as one would expect. They realize
when it is and isn't an issue. For example, blog reposts do not hurt you (in
fact they may help you) even though they show up as duplicate content.

Just my 2 cents. I'm not a fan of WPEngine anyway.

~~~
eli
I would be _shocked_ if there's any sort of duplicate content penalty for
having two different domain names point to exactly the same site (same IP and
everything).

~~~
bhartzer
There is actually no such thing as a "duplicate content pentalty". It's not a
penalty. Google indexes (and cares about) whatever they crawl first: the other
duplicates are pretty much ignored, even though they will show up in the
index.

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jaredmck
I get that it's easier to set up WPEngine, but this seems like one of those
cases where you might be better off learning what to do - just set up a self-
hosted VPS with nginx + varnish?

At least if you're gonna have multiple sites, this WPEngine is expensive
stuff.

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henryaj
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gbC9hvm...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gbC9hvmjZLIJ:auditwp.com/wp-
engine-seo-failboat/&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1)

------
bhartzer
>> 504 Gateway Time-out -- Your SEO won't work if your site doesn't respond.

~~~
rschmitty
Note to future authors: When you use the word "failboat" in your blog post,
make sure you don't "set sail for fail" yourself

