Google Mis-Matching Domain Content on Shared IP’s
Posted on May 5th, 2006by Michael Gray in SEO
I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here but I can tell you it’s significantly wierd. I can’t say exactly why it’s happening but it looks like Google is mixing the content for different domains from completely different owners if they share an IP. For example on Google search for [ibmg.net] you’ll see the correct domain listed but the content is “hogmania wild boar hunting in texas” from Hogamania.com.
Looking at the cache we see the hogmania.com content
Click to Enlarge
Now if we go and look at Hogamania.com it looks legit, but it’s not clear why that content in the cache for ibmg.net, but they do share an IP.
Let’s look at another example [www.pawlakfuneralhome.com]. For some reason it’s showing the content of the Bodega Bay Website
Click to Enlarge
Looking at the cache we see the Bodega Bay website info. However looking at pawlak funeral home and Bodega Bay it just doesn’t feel like someone is spamming on purpose. However they are both on the same IP [69.36.163.99]
If we look at [sharkrodeo.com] we see the information listed for traininginfusion.com listed in the cache .
Click to Enlarge
That IP 69.36.163.99 is being used for the websites again. If you’ve got answer for this please drop something in the comments. Hey Matt Cutts or any of you other Google folk is something amiss here, or is there some major spammin’ & jammin’ going on?
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May 5th, 2006 at 3:26 am
[...] Interesante post de Graywolf en el que ilustra cómo Google atribuye el contenido un dominio a otro, con varios ejemplos, y tratándose de IPs compartidas. A priori los sitios parecen normales, y en por ejemplo Msn Search no se ve problema alguno. ¿Alguien tiene la respuesta a la pregunta? [...]
May 5th, 2006 at 11:31 am
The vast majority of the time that two sites on the same IP get confounded, it’s an issue with the webhost not configuring virtual hosts correctly. The last two times I checked into reports like this, both turned out to be misconfigured virtual hosts.
The detailed answer is that Googlebot supports HTTP 1.1 which allows for virtual hosts. So e.g. we’d go to 69.36.163.99 and request “Host: http://www.ibmg.net” or whatever. It’s up to your webhost’s web server to return the content for ibmg.net. 99.99% of the time that happens correctly, but sometimes the webhost misconfigures something. Sometimes the webhost is trying to do something sneaky, but usually it’s a simple mistake.
I’ll ask the crawl/index folks to double-check though.
I’ll ask to be sure though.
May 5th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Now that is customer service!
May 5th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
The crawl team dug into this and verified that it looks like a server-side bug with that IP/webhost.
May 5th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
I submitted a ticket this afternoon with these details, it got kicked up to higher level technician. Still in the system.
Thanks for checking it out, I’ll post an update when I get more info.
May 5th, 2006 at 11:02 pm
this use to happen to adultfriendinder.com too before.
May 6th, 2006 at 10:42 am
Good eye Gray - and great and timely explanation Matt! Hehe it surely pays to be on Matt’s blackhat RSS list
May 7th, 2006 at 8:56 am
So Matt - does this also explain the image search issue Michael posted at http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6334 ?
May 7th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Vermeintlicher Fehler im Google-Cache
Ein Blogger schien einen gravierenden Software-Fehler in Googles Such- und Cache-Funktion entdeckt zu haben. In einigen Fällen verwechselt Google 2 Webseiten miteinander, und das sowohl bei der Suche, als auch im Cache. Doch das ganze stellte sich da…
May 8th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Update hosting company acknowledges the problem and has a technician working on on it. Will post updates.
It’s annoying not being able to repost the hosting companies response but they have all sort of legal disclaimers at the bottom complicating the issue.
May 8th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
adultfriendinder.com was something different, vex.
Graywolf, I’ve now had two crawl folks confirm it’s a bug on the webhost. Tell them to look at persistent connections in Apache with virtual hosting. That is, Apache supports requesting not just via virtual hosts with HTTP 1.1, but also doing a persistent connection to grab pages from domain1.com and domain2.com in the same connection. The webhost didn’t set it up correctly. Looks like the webhost was running Apache 1.3.7, so maybe they could upgrade their Apache.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Matt thanks I really appreciate the info. Here’s the thing that’s kind of distressing, this kind of thing could clearly cause “issues” for joe webmaster, how would they ever know, know what to look for and know what to get on their hosts case about? Are there indicators and tools that regular people have access to? How about a “looking at webcrawling and common problems” post on your blog?
May 8th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Hi,
http://www.pawlakfuneralhome.com looks like it is running on a rebranded Sphera VDS platform. This is a known issue that heavily affects name based VDS’s on the Sphera platform. The others, *might* be running on Sphera - some users remove their manager page on the VDS and go into their control panel by another route.
Please have a look at
google.com/group/google-sitemaps/browse_frm/thread/ac06a0ab2fa543fb?tvc=1″ target=”_blank”>http://groups.google.com/group/google-sitemaps/browse_frm/thread/ac06a0ab2fa543fb?tvc=1
May 9th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
[...] Another example that happened this week was when I read Graywolf’s post about Google showing content from domain A on domain B. Graywolf gave three examples of sites getting confounded, with screenshots (always a helpful idea), but every example was from the same IP address. Now if you’re an experienced search person, two sites on the same IP getting confounded makes you think of one explanation: the webhost configured virtual hosting wrong. Right? Can I get a “w00t” from the back there? Cool, thanks. [...]
May 10th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
[...] Google Mis-Matching Domain Content on Shared IP’s : (tags: google hosting) [...]
June 6th, 2006 at 5:57 am
Hi,
I’ve the same problem and my provider tells me that the problem is coming from the SPHERA web hosting software. Apparently SPHERA can’t help them and doesn’t give support for this problem.
I’m going to forward Matt’s comments (May 8th, 2006 at 7:21 pm) to see if they can do something…
July 18th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Have had exactly the same issue. Since “Big Daddy”, my domain RudyMayer.com is now showing up as dwellings.com/rudymayer/
In addition, another [competitors] site hosted on the same server, JimMillerSellsHomes.com is coming up as dwellings.com/miller/
To make it worse, these two real estate agents are competitors in the same town, yet the main search result is for one agent, the secondary result indented underneath is for a different agent. Not good.
In addition, another site on the same server, Roslindale.net has completely REPLACED RudyMayer.com for a search under Nashua NH Real Estate. However, that Roslindale site isn’t even a real estate site, nor is it located in the same state. It is COMPLETELY and totally unrelated, yet resides on the same server. It shouldn’t come up on page 5,000,000 for Nashua NH real estate, let alone as the TOP result. Something is funky with Google. It’s hurting business for customers, and completely diluting Google’s search results - not good for Google either. I have written them dozens of times, with no response. Very frustrating.