richlowe - 4:54 pm on Aug 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

As a searcher, I don't want to visit the same page several times at different addresses

Of course, that's the reason for the 301 status code. It tells the search engine to remove it so it's not added to the index.

The duplicate domain names are great for other types of marketing campaigns. They other domain names are not intended for search engine marketing, as it's best to use just a single domain in those instances.

The job of finding exact page duplicates is actually rather easy, and not as big a task as might be imagined

I understand. I think it's just good to be sure any alternate domains use the 301 redirect. That should eliminate confusion and problems.

Does that take hosting for the additional domain names

I believe this could be handled in an htaccess file. the domain name is passed in the http header. Any htaccess experts care to comment on how to check this?

On NT and 2000 it's trivial.

By the way, great responses. Thanks.

Richard Lowe