404 redirect

[anoopsharda]

Hi

I have more than 500 domains pointing to one virtualhost. I need to set 404 for all these domains, how can I do that using Rewrite rule. Here is the example of what I want

if my domain name is abc.com , 404 should redirect user to abc.com and if xyz.com is the site name entered by user, 404 should redirect user to xyz.com.

please help.

anoop

[jdMorgan]

This question is confusing, because a 404 is not a redirect.

301-Moved Permanently (redirect)
302-Found -- or Moved Temporarily (redirect)
403-Forbidden (this is not a redirect)
404-Not Found (this is not a redirect)

Note that 3xx responses are redirects, while 4xx responses are error indicators.

So, which do you want -- a 404-Not found, or a 301 redirect to the correct domain?

I would caution you against redirecting "too many" domains to one domain. Six is relatively safe, twelve is getting "spammy-looking," and twenty-four is right out...

If you do not link to more than a few of these domains, and you do not allow others to link to them, then you will probably be OK. But if the intent is to get links to 500 domains, and then try to pass all of their PR into one domain, that's going to be easily detected, and the SEs will take a very dim view of it.

It might be better to "park" the extra domains by using a 302 redirect to a "This domain is parked" page.

Jim