Google and Domain Aliases

Bad idea?

[wesg]

I'm starting a website, and the client has registered 2 domain names to point to the site. I know I could do 301 redirects to prevent Google from seeing duplicate content, but I don't want to have more hosting. My current host offers domain aliases, which supposedly do the job. Is this a bad idea?

*Writing this post, I may have come up with a solution myself. If I activate the domain alias, but create an .htaccess rewrite to send all domainb requests to domaina, Google should only see a single site. Would that work?

[le_gber]

If I activate the domain alias, but create an .htaccess rewrite to send all domainb requests to domaina, Google should only see a single site. Would that work?

wesg, that's exactly what I did over the weekend with a rewriteCond and rewrite rules. It seems to do the trick nicely.

this is what I ended up with:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com [nc,or]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain\.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[GreenGambler]

Is it bad to have your site hosted on, lets say "keyworddomainname(.)com" but use the name "kwdn" and have "kwdn" forward to "keyworddomainname(.)com", for branding and to make it easier for customers to do a direct type in.