Welcome to the Q&A Forum

This is a knowledge graph showing up with non branded queries. I attached two examples. I thought I attached them to the original post.

V51iKCt nUYr05x

Does anyone have any insights on why a knowledge graph may show up for non branded search queries? Examples attached.

nUYr05x V51iKCt

Ryan,

Thanks for your quick response!  The reason we aren't doing 301s or noindex on these sites is that they no longer exist.  We would have to essentially resurrect these dev sites for the sole purpose of redirecting.  Since Google's cached version is the new/current url wouldn't that imply that they are aware of the change and the subdomains are hanging around for another reason?

We typically noindex dev sites but a couple of them slipped by without.

Hey guys,

I've got kind of a strange situation going on and I can't seem to find it addressed anywhere.  I have a site that at one point had several development sites set up at subdomains.  Those sites have since launched on their own domains, but the subdomain sites are still showing up in the Google index.  However, if you look at the cached version of pages on these non-existent subdomains, it lists the NEW url, not the dev one in the little blurb that says "This is Google's cached version of www.correcturl.com."  Clearly Google recognizes that the content resides at the new location, so how come the old pages are still in the index?  Attempting to visit one of them gives a "Server Not Found" error, so they are definitely gone.

This is happening to a couple of sites, one that was launched over a year ago so it doesn't appear to be a "wait and see" solution.

Any suggestions would be a huge help.  Thanks!!

A client of ours just had this happen to them as well. We saw a large spike in referral traffic from them, which led me to do some digging into their company. Looks like a search engine trying to grab traction and leads through a fancy landing page. If it continues, I will simply be blocking the site in my reporting software.

Ryan,

Thanks for your quick response!  The reason we aren't doing 301s or noindex on these sites is that they no longer exist.  We would have to essentially resurrect these dev sites for the sole purpose of redirecting.  Since Google's cached version is the new/current url wouldn't that imply that they are aware of the change and the subdomains are hanging around for another reason?

We typically noindex dev sites but a couple of them slipped by without.

Does anyone have any insights on why a knowledge graph may show up for non branded search queries? Examples attached.

nUYr05x V51iKCt

This is a knowledge graph showing up with non branded queries. I attached two examples. I thought I attached them to the original post.

V51iKCt nUYr05x