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apacheseoclonecracking

Block "cloner" servers rendering content from our server


I have a website of mine (freeofficefinder.com) that is being cloned (see here: thelawyerserviceratings.org) There are actually over 25 websites that are currently cloning our website.

Obviously this is hurting our SEO ranking greatly due to "duplicate content". Is there something that I could add to the Apache config file to ensure that only our website is rendered at the domain freeofficefinder.com. And for all other domains this is blocked?


Solution

  • As I can see, you web server configured to serve the same virtual host for any requested server name.

    Example:

    # telnet freeofficefinder.com 80
    Trying 78.109.169.208...
    Connected to freeofficefinder.com.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    GET / HTTP/1.1
    Host: blablabla.com
    
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2015 15:54:24 GMT
    Server: Apache/2.4.12 (Ubuntu)
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.9
    Set-Cookie: device_view=full
    Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=qbe8aar8b58ckr9nvlqbnsdgd2; expires=Wed, 10-Jun-2015 16:54:30 GMT; Max-Age=3600; path=/
    Cache-Control: max-age=0, public, s-maxage=604800
    X-Content-Digest: en7c017d952f04b31ac9f09a61d0ed6561fd153e3549cdf743cbb277e2db847bab
    Content-Length: 17105
    Age: 0
    Set-Cookie: device_view=full; expires=Thu, 09-Jul-2015 23:00:00 GMT; Max-Age=2531130; path=/; httponly
    Vary: Accept-Encoding
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
    
    ... content ...
    

    This means, anybody can set A-record to your web server IP (78.109.169.208) and your site will work on any domain. The cause is you use an asterisk * as a ServerName Look through your Apache configs, find ServerName and ServerAlias directives, having * as a value, and replace * with your actual host name (freeofficefinder.com).

    Then add another one <VirtualHost> section above yours and set a ServerName * for it. This special section will serve requests for all unknown domains like "thelawyerserviceratings.org" etc. You can put there some funny content.