How Is DogVacay.com Doing this?

[pbarnhart]

Backstory: Dogvacay.com started redirecting to rover.com after their merger in 2017. The current website is a static copy "Mirrored from dogvacay.com/ by HTTrack Website Copier/3.x [XR&CO'2014], Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:28:09 GMT" and every single click since 1 July 2017 takes you to rover.com. They have hundreds of local listings - just type in "dog boarding phoenix" or use your town and the local dogvacay page will probably rank on the first page. You will go to a dogvacay local landing page, but any click after that takes you to a rover.com search.

• So they have a website that is a collection of doorway pages that have redirected for more than a year to another domain's general search page.
• Their review stars can't be verified - the reviews and dog sitter profiles can't even be read.
• The site hasn't been changed since 2017.
• Many of the reviewed people are not even on the redirected site.

Question: HOW is this site still dominating local organic search results for dog boarding related keywords while seeming to break multiple Google best practices for so long? And yes, multiple people have flagged this site over the past year.

 

[DanLeibson]

Rover bought DogVacay a while ago and likely redirected the website. Google is really bad at updating redirected web URLs in their index that have a lot of internal and external links pointed at them. So likely what is happening is just an issue with Google's system that Rover appears to be benefitting from.

Rover.com buys rival DogVacay

The two companies operate websites and apps that help dog owners in the U.S. and Canada find people nearby to walk or care for their pets.

www.seattletimes.com

 

[pony]

I don't think they are necessarily breaking any guidelines to be honest, but I am surprised they still have review rich snippets showing up in SERPs.

They have not redirected their entire site so it makes sense that the landing pages still rank. This is fairly common practice, as lots of websites are setup to capture organic traffic and then send the referrals elsewhere.

I'm didn't do much research on the competition but I'm guessing those dogvacay.com pages still out perform in terms of links and on page SEO.

 

[pbarnhart]

The redirects have been in place over a year, and their SERP has actually improved over that time. Since they keep the initial landing pages up but redirect all clicks, when do these become 'doorway' pages?

 

[DanLeibson]

Since they keep the initial landing pages up but redirect all clicks, when do these become 'doorway' pages?

Can you unpack this for me? The DogVacay homepage still resolves (Dog Boarding with Trusted, Local Pet Sitters | DogVacay) but the internal pages have been redirected to Rover. Nothing is a doorway page as they have redirected them. They have told Google they have moved, It's Google that is not processing what DogVacay/Rover is doing properly. There is nothing improper about redirecting all internal pages but leaving a homepage up to tell branded searches/direct navigation that the brand experience has changed.

 

[pbarnhart]

Can you unpack this for me? The DogVacay homepage still resolves (Dog Boarding with Trusted, Local Pet Sitters | DogVacay) but the internal pages have been redirected to Rover. Nothing is a doorway page as they have redirected them. They have told Google they have moved, It's Google that is not processing what DogVacay/Rover is doing properly. There is nothing improper about redirecting all internal pages but leaving a homepage up to tell branded searches/direct navigation that the brand experience has changed.

They aren't redirecting their interior pages directly. Hundreds and hundreds of local pages still appear in search. They are still listed in the sitemap.xml. When you go to the local page, it contains local sitters and write ups on the dogvacay.com domain. It's only when a visitor clicks on any link that you are redirected to the default rover.com search. They are deliberately not redirecting their interior pages. Try a search for yourself. This allows both the dogvacay.com and rover.com to appear in search, and with dogvacay preserving their review stars even when the companion rover.com local page has lost theirs.

 

[pbarnhart]

And these zombie, non-redirected local pages often rank very high for local searches for dog sitters, dog boarding etc. The active site local pages - rover.com - often rank much lower.