*.netlify.com & *.netlify.app potential duplicate content SEO issue

We are preparing to migrate a site from one provider to Netlify and we have some concerns about SEO in regards to duplicate content.

So I have some questions about this:

  1. Is the correct way to force a 301 redirect from the netlify domain to redirect and set https://www.example.co.uk/ as the cannonical?

    https://example.netlify.app/* https://www.example.co.uk/:splat 301!

  2. Would the *.netlify.app or *.netlify.com subdomains show up in Google (even via site:netlify.app in Google Search?)

  3. Is it possible to set the live *.netlify.app domain only to not index (via a robots tag) and the the domain www.example.co.uk to be indexed in Google?

Thanks.

@wyles Welcome to the Netlify community.

Does this help?

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Hey @gregraven I’ve had a look at the post, but it doesn’t seem like that post answers my conerns about 2. and 3. of my question.

@wyles I think the point is that with the correct canonical information on each page, Google may see the content under different URLs but it won’t index it, deferring to the canonical version.

Also, you can set up either your Netlify settings or other DNS or _redirects to point all traffic to the URL / domain of your choosing. You don’t have to be at the tender mercies of Google to do things the way you want, you can actually influence the outcome yourself.

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Here is a good explanation of the canonical tag and 301 redirects and how they apply.