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I have a domain, www.timeclockmtsonline that I have 301'd to www.timeclockmts-online.com using the following PHP:

<?php
    header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ); 
    header( "Location: http://www.timeclockmts-online.com" ); 
?>

However, when I do a google search on with www.timeclockmtsonline.com as the search term I can see a listing for that domain. I thought I'd see nothing. Now I am worried about being hit with a duplicate content penalty.

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1 Answer

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Is the visibility a problem for you? The "old" site is still indexed by search engines and any incoming links are 301'ed to the new site. Good. Status code "301" says that content "moved permanently" so there is, at least in this context, no duplicate content problem. There is no benefit (more harm) in trying to get the old site from the index (e.g. with the help of a disallowing robots.txt file).

Google Webmastertools offer an additional way to indicate an address change in Webmastertools -> Configuration, you can select the new domain. (And even there the 301-redirection is recommended).

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Thanks. It seems strange that Google would maintain a copy of it in their search results. Seeing an exact match there was enough to give me the heebie jeebies. – nemmy Feb 1 at 22:28

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