Test Site Being Indexed Bug?

[RuralWeb]

Just before XMas I posted about some of my test sites showing in the google index but I could not work out how it was happening - this may be a possible reason http://community.actinic.com/showthr...d=1#post142161

This is IMO a serious bug as the test site will have all sorts of negative effects on a sites rankings and what visitors see if it becomes indexed.

[Bun]

Similar thoughts back in October. Never left a test site up there for more than a few mins......so that's me indexed then

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=24089

[cdicken]

Hi Malcolm

Just need a bit more information about this.

Basically, the test site has a different script ID (it starts with a '9') so links in live pages will only go to the test site if you have hard coded a link that goes via the search script, and it includes the 9 (e.g. ss900001.pl rather than ss000001.pl). Do you think this is a possibility?

Having said that, when you change back from test mode to production mode, the test directory is removed from the website anyway so I can't see how a search engine would find the pages - unless there is a permissions/setup error on the server that means Actinic does not have permission to delete files.

The only thing I can think of with mash's problem is that perhaps there is a caching/cookie issue on Mash's PC that has stored the 'test/acatalog' address as the 'Base HREF' for her site, so the search string tries to take people to that address.

I'm just firing out ideas here, but I'd appreciate your thoughts.

[RuralWeb]

Having said that, when you change back from test mode to production mode, the test directory is removed from the website

Its not being removed on any of my sites, I am having to delete the test folder from the server.

Dont know about the live links to the test site but somehow the bots are getting in.

[leehack]

I concur also, test sites are not being deleted.

[Duncan Rounding]

My test sites have all been deleted OK. There must be something odd causing them to remain.

[dave_finlayson]

Malcolm,

Is this the Rural Web site you are talking about? I notice you have a link to this image in your test folder on your home page:-

<tr background="http://www.ruralwebdesign.co.uk/acatalog/test/acatalog/relax.jpg">

Could this be how the bots are getting in?

[RuralWeb]

this the Rural Web site you are talking about

No its a couple of others that I have taken down before XMas. But the link you have highlighted is interesting - I wonder how that came about?

My site was built in test mode and then switched so all the links should have been automatically updated

[RuralWeb]

Update - just switched a couple of test sites to production mode and the test site was deleted from the server - 04 seems to have fixed whatever was wrong with my setup.

[Mike Hughes]

If you don't want your test site indexed then you also have to make sure that any search engine extras, like the PR indicator in the google toolbar, alexa toolbar, etc are switched off.

When they're turned on they leave trails of which websites are visited for the search engines to go take a look at later.

Mike

[pinbrook]

I spend a few days this week trying to work out how a client site was taking "ghost orders" customers got all the way to WP before being rejected. We eventually got a customer to tell us the keyphrase they typed into google to find our rogue site. This lead us to a test site we left on a remote server with a test url. - This got indexed!! It wasn't using Actinic test site feature, but was a full actinic site in no incoming links.

Darn Actinic and its spider friendly pages, we now have to get this de-indexed.

I'm going back to robots for exclusions and noindex nofollow meta tags

[RuralWeb]

Darn Actinic and its spider friendly pages

V8 is a real beast for being SE friendly. A client called me today and said his test site was happily taking orders!!!! - at least sales are up