1&1 and strange address: "initial-webiste.co.uk"

[dominique7]

Dear Web-Experts,

it's a question related to hosting and SEO at the same time.
I was looking (and trying to find in Google) at a friend's site and was surprised to find it under ... xyz...initial-website.co.uk while the original address was lapetitebretagne.co.uk
The bad thing is that even the links from the site with the original domain link to "initial-website..."

Tried to find info through Google on those strange addresses but couldn't get any clarity, just found that there are lots of sites registered through 1&1 with that address, just on another subdomain.

WHere to fix the problem?
* CHange the hosting company?
* Contact 1&1 or change a setting in the hosting?
* Maybe change the preferred domain in Google Webmaster tools?

I'd be really glad for any help!

Best regards,
Dominique

[Dani]

It's possible that 1&1 uses a subdomain on the initial-website.co.uk domain for all new sites that haven't yet propagated over to their own domains. If it is not a brand new site (with a very recently registered domain name) then I would contact 1&1.

[Dani]

Also ... If 1&1 permanently keeps a copy of your site at that subdomain, you may want to consider adding an .htaccess file to do a Permanent Redirect if their site is accessed from anything except www.domain.com

[dominique7]

Thank you for the suggestions, Dani!

The page isn't new (about 1 year old), so like you recommended, I just contacted 1&1, because this seems to disturb a good search engine ranking a lot and is confusing to visitors.
I'm not sure about the redirect, it's a friend's site and I just asked him which hosting plan he got. Seems to be one which bases on an adaptable template and there may not be a lot of configuration in the package.

I'm curious to read 1&1s reply.

Cheers,
Dominique

[Dani]

An .htaccess file should fix the problem, if they will let you upload it. If not, see if they will do it for you since it does hurt the search results.

[dominique7]

Erm... until now, I only did 301 redirects in the website management interface, but I just read that a .htaccess file could do the same, like:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

In my case, "old" would be the unwanted strange address and "new" the wanted domain "lapetitebretagne.co.uk"?

Oh, and 1&1 replied and explained my friend had used two different packages, one for a domain and one with that generic address. It seems he wasn't perfectly aware of what might happen.

Thanks again, Dani!
Dominique

[dominique7]

Oh... and there's a problem that would remain, I think:

Even on his site "lapetitebretagne.co.uk", all the links in the menu go to the other domain. That's strange and wouldn't be fixed with the redirect, I think.

[Dani]

Yes, using the .htaccess would do a redirect 301. This will inform Google and the rest of the search engines to only index the real location and not the subdomain one.