Multiple domain names pointing to the same site.

[Confusedman]

Hello, I have taken it upon myself to sort out the company website (probably foolishly!) I have been reading that if you have multiple domain names pointing to the same webpage content you should setup a 301 redirect to avoid getting penalised on google search? We have many different domain names all pointing via Zoneedit DNS (each domain has its own ZE record) to our locally hosted server here (the URL that the person follows or types stays in the address bar) - is this doing the same thing as a redirect or is this wrong?

I suspect its wrong, as I can see oddities such as the 'US' url being listed first in google, and the main URL we want to come up doesnt feature at all in the first page of results, only way further down and even then not the index page its a news page that is listed. Also I can see another of the domain names listed in the results showing another random page - this must be confusing for customers as there are three different domain names in the results showing information from the same site! :rolleyes:

FYI email is 99% sent using just one of the domain names but sometimes to one of the others as the company is registered under that name.

When I say 'US' site its not even a separate site its just got a different banner at the top and bottom using a simple $domain_name = "XXXXXusa.com"; $flag = "usa.gif"; bit of code in the index.php...

[ozbon]

If you're getting issues like this, I'd set up the sites/domains to redirect using an HTTP redirect rather than the DNS redirects.

Also, make sure you're signed up to Google Webmaster Tools, which will allow you to nominate a preferred site etc.

I think (although I'm happy to be corrected) that what you need if you're doing the DNS redirects, you want to use a proper redirect (forwarding) rather than one that keeps the same URL in the address bar (cloaking)

If you take some time and set up proper sites (even if just an index.php that then redirects to the correct site) for the ones you don't want, you can also set up a robots.txt file for each site, and use that to get Google to delete the "incorrect" sites from its records. That's another thing that may help.

I'd be happy to help with this if necessary - feel free to contact me via PM through this site.

[crossdaz]

Hello, I have taken it upon myself to sort out the company website (probably foolishly!) I have been reading that if you have multiple domain names pointing to the same webpage content you should setup a 301 redirect to avoid getting penalised on google search? We have many different domain names all pointing via Zoneedit DNS (each domain has its own ZE record) to our locally hosted server here (the URL that the person follows or types stays in the address bar) - is this doing the same thing as a redirect or is this wrong?


They could be doing a 302 redirect which can cause problems. If you are not going to use the domains then do a 301 on all of them.

You can check what type of redirect is being used here:
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/

[Confusedman]

Thanks all, I used that redirect checker and it came back with 'direct link' for our domains. Is this anything different to what is achieved using a 301 redirect?

I see on our domain control panel there are these options under web forwarding:

1) Framed web-forwarding to a single page
If you select web-forwarding to a single page the destination URL can have a specific filename on the end (e.g. index.htm).
It could just point to a directory (URL ends with /) in which case the files displayed would depend on the webserver 'directory index' settings.
The destination URL will be replaced by XXXXXXX.com.

2) Non-framed web-forwarding to a single page
This option is the same as above however the destination URL will always be displayed in the address bar of the browser.

3) Framed web-forwarding
The destination URL will be replaced by XXXXXXX.com

4) Non-framed web-forwarding
The destination URL will remain in the browser's address bar.

I guess the 301 you are talking about we need to use is number 2?

[ozbon]

Yep - Option #2 is the one to use, although 4 also works.

The problem with the framed forwarding is that Google et al can then start to see the sites as "multiple sites with the same content", which is A Bad Thing. Simple web-forwarding allows the user to see the place they've actually ended up at, and also means they can bookmark pages properly, rather than bookmarking something on an "incorrect" site.

[Confusedman]

Does google blacklist the domains marked as "multiple sites with the same content"?

[Confusedman]

By the way, if we setup the other domains to forward to our main one as described, will any existing links to pages on the 'sub' domains by other sites be broken?