Forum Moderators: buckworks & webwork

Message Too Old, No Replies

Two domain names...

...causing confusion with SEs?

         

jo1ene

1:05 am on Jun 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have two (actually three but two are causing a problem) domain names pointing to the same site. When Google spiders it, it shows fuzzybluewidgets.com in the results. All the other SEs show fuzzy-blue-widgets.com I primarily use the one without dashes although there a few old links out there (that aren't really important) to the one with dashes.

Is this a problem for me? Should I submit the one without dashes to the other SEs or the one with to G? I'm wondering why this is and/or if I should care.

gethan

5:50 am on Jun 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It is not a problem - but could cause SE's to think there is duplicate content, which may harm rankings a little.

I would:

Choose one domain to be authorative: the one without the dashes which you use more.

Setup a redirect from the old domain; to the new one:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) [example.com...] [L,R=301,QSA]

Is a catchall redirect - anything that is not your chosen domain is redirected to the correct domain - with html pages and query strings appended.

Wait for the SE's to catch up.

Do bare in mind though that the domain name with the dashes may do slightly better in the rankings due to the keywords in the domain name.

jo1ene

5:49 pm on Jun 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Ah ha. Redirect. I must have some kind of redirect because I have three addresses and only one hosting account.

I'm not sure if this would be duplicate content, since I only have one hosted space for my site. Does this make a difference?

I'll have to talk to my hosting company. Unfortunatly they hire trained monkies.