Two host names appearing on Google for the same site

If you have an application hosted in Window's Azure your application will have a host name such as mysite.cloudapp.net. You will probably also have a CNAME that points www.mysite.com to the cloudapp. So what if both domains have been indexed by Google? How do you get cloudapp.net URL off of Google?

This is not a problem with Windows Azure; this can happen to any site that has two hostnames/IPs that point to the same site. It is just a recurring issue I see during my Azure consultancy work and worth a quick explanation and solution.

Both mysite.cloudapp.net and mysite.com are pointing to the exact same application and servers so there is no way you can switch one off since they are one and the same, just accessible through two paths. (Well, more than two since they will at least have IP address paths too.)

This issue can be solved in your application code. Your application will need to determine what host name the application has been accessed through and either display the page if the host name is correct or 301 redirect to the correct hostname if the host name is wrong. So how to do it?

301 Redirect cloudapp.net to your correct domain

This can be done in your application by setting a redirect rule using the IIS URL Rewrite Module. There is already a template in IIS's Rewrite Module for doing this called "Canonical domain name" under the SEO section, however I don't particularly like this one since it redirects everything that isn't the correct hostname (e.g. your development machine). Still, you should have a look at it to see what it is doing.

The key steps of what your rule should be doing are:

1. Check to see if the host name is incorrect
2. If it is it should issue a redirect to the correct domain name
3. The redirect should be a 301
4. The page should remain e.g. http://mysite.cloudapp.net/hello.html -> http://www.mysite.com/hello.html
5. If the host name is not in violation the page rendering should continue without further action

So you can make your own however you feel is best but here is my example to get you going.

<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="CanonicalHostNameRule1">
            <match url="(.*)" />
            <conditions>
                <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^mysite\.cloudapp\.net$" negate="false" />
            </conditions>
            <action type="Redirect" url="http://www.mysite.com/{R:1}" />
        </rule>
    </rules>
</rewrite>

This code goes in the <system.webServer>...</system.webServer> section of your web.config. Again this is only an example, you may wish to add another condition for handling your IP address for example.

This redirect will solve the problem of any users visiting the incorrect site. Also, because it is a 301 redirect, over a week or two Google will remove the cloudapp.net URL from its search results and attribute its existing value to the correct URL.