Domain Redirect to Alias or Separate Subsites?

How common? Other methods?

[adfree]

We own hundreds of domains, most for our brands. Will be thousands soon as we register more to complete the brand-domain relation.

Now there is a little conflict though: do we:
- redirect the domain to the alias as in:
[widgets.com...]

...or:

- build some minor but keyword and topic rich content subsites with links back to the main site and try to get some more traffic in

What's your advice, experience?

[adfree]

anyone?

[folkbloke]

Well I've been running a web site that has about 200 domain names. All of the domain DNS records point to one IP and that resolves to a default web site.

It would seem that Google doesn't like this. It went from PR5 to 0.

So now I'm going over to having hundreds of web sites, with automatically generated content, linked to the main site.

[webdude]

folkbloke,

I would set up a 301 permanent redirect for all the domain names except the main one, and point all your domain names to the 301 which in turn points to the main site.

I had a similar situation in which I obtained a site that had around 50 domain names. Google always gave a PR of 0 for these domains. We pointed all the domins except for the main site to 301 redirects. In time, google started to rank the main site and the other domains fell out of the SERPs.

[folkbloke]

Thanks. I'll set that up now.

[beej]

How would you suggest handling a situation where you need to redirect people who type in a misspelling of your domain name to the actual domain, so that the correct spelling appears in the address bar of the browser? This is needed due to SSL certificate issues. Thanks for your help!

[webdude]

beej

I know of no way of doing this unless you happened to own the domain names that are mis-spelled. If you owned widget.com and wadgit.com. you could redirect all that type in wadget.com to be redirected to widget.com, but ownership of both domains is required.

I don't think the root servers or any other authoritive domain name server is going to allow for mis-spellings.

[edited by: webdude at 4:57 pm (utc) on Oct. 14, 2004]

[webdude]

By the way beej, Welcome to WebMasterWorld!

[PatrickDeese]

I don't think there would be any problem 301'ing brandwidget.com to brand.com/widget.

Yahoo does something like this for mailyahoo.com and lots of other sites do as well.

[beej]

Thanks for the welcome! Actually, we do own the misspellings. We currently use DNS to redirect them, but the misspelling remains in the address bar, which throws the SSL errors.

[webdude]

If you use a redirect, the mis-spellings will correct themselves in the address bar. I do it all the time for my sites. It works pretty slick and can concentrate PR to the main pages supposedly.

[beej]

what type of redirect are you suggesting? Thanks again for the help!

[webdude]

301 redirects are the way to go. There seems to have been some problems with sites using meta refreshes and 302 redirects from google point of view. Supposedly, Google will follow 301 permanent redirects.

[beej]

I'll give it a go. Thanks again for the speedy assistance, and have a great day!

[beej]

Sorry for the newbie question, but it just occurred to me that, since we're redirecting the misspellings with a DNS record, a 301 redirect won't work, right? It sounds like I'd need to create a new website for each misspelling, and then have the DNS record for each misspelling modified to match. Does that sound like the way to go?

[webdude]

No,

The way I would do it is to have one site set up for all the mis-spellings and then another site as the main site. Point all DNS A records for the mis-spelled sites to point to the correct site. That way anyone coming in to the ANY of the mispelled sites will be redirected to the correct site.

Does this make sense to you?

This is the way I have it set up. Works very well.

[beej]

Sorry, Webdude, you lost me. First, we're already pointing the DNS records for the misspellings to the correct spelling. This works, but keeps the misspelling in the address bar, which causes the SSL errors we're trying to eliminate.

Second, I'm not sure what you mean about creating one site for all of the misspellings.

[webdude]

Sorry, Webdude, you lost me. First, we're already pointing the DNS records for the misspellings to the correct spelling. This works, but keeps the misspelling in the address bar, which causes the SSL errors we're trying to eliminate.

What you need to do is set up all the mis-spelled domain names to point to one IP address in your DNS. And then point the real domain name to point to the another IP address in your DNS. On the server, you set up 2 websites, one for each IP address. On the site that has all the mis-spelled domain names, add a 301 redirect to point to the other site (real domain name) which is on the server.

Second, I'm not sure what you mean about creating one site for all of the misspellings.

Maybe I am assuming too much. I host my own sites and I have a Class C block. I also have several DNS servers. This gives me total control over all aspects of building and hosting web sites. This also gives me the luxury of being able to set up multiple sites on one server. I currently have around 40 sites, some for fun, others are paying customers.

In order to set up 2 sites on one server, you need to be able to host both at one, a virtual server. If you are paying for a hosting company to host for you, then forget everything I just mentioned. It probably won't work for you unless you are willing to pay for an extra web site.

You might be able to do a 301 redirect in ASP if the server you are using allows for that.

<%
Response.Status = "301"
Call Response.AddHeader ("Location","http://www.site.com/newpage.asp")
Response.End
%>

But I can see this might not work for multiple domain names unless you could set up another site. So back to square one.

I also know if the server is using Apache, you can use the apache's standard modules - mod_rewrite. But to do this, you would need access to the server or you could use the .htaccess file to do the redirects.

Do you have your own server or is this hosted somewhere else?

[beej]

thanks for that detailed explanation! Yes, we are hosting ourselves, so DNS configuration is not a problem. I'll set up the second website for the misspellings, and redirect it to the correct site. Then, I'll have the related DNS records changed to point to the main site.

There's no advantage to using the ASP redirect over setting up the permanent redirect in IIS, is there?

Thanks again for taking the time to go through the options with me on this - I really appreciate it.

[webdude]

No. I use IIS and I use only the IIS MMC console to configure my sites this way. The advantage is that you can also redirect your www.widgit.com site to widgit.com site. Or the other way around as to how most of your incoming links are spelled out. It seems that there was some banter about in the forums of the www versus no www in the site and each being ranked separately. In other words...

1st site
widget.com -- main site
all 301's 2nd site
www.widget.com -- 301 redirect
www.wadget.com -- 301 redirect
www.wedget.com -- 301 redirect
wadget.com -- 301 redirect
wedget.com -- 301 redirect

OR

1st site
www.widget.com -- main site
all 301's 2nd site
widget.com -- 301 redirect
www.wadget.com -- 301 redirect
www.wedget.com -- 301 redirect
wadget.com -- 301 redirect
wedget.com -- 301 redirect

Hope that helps.

[beej]

Wow, that sure does help! I'm working on the changes now - thanks again for everything!

[webdude]

Glad to help! :-)

[beej]

Hey - got another puzzler for ya - any idea why the IIS 6 logfile for that new site keeps repeating the header lines, like so, at apparently random and frequent intervals:

#Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0
#Version: 1.0
#Date: 2004-10-18 05:46:23
#Fields: date time s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) cs(Referer) sc-status sc-substatus sc-win32-status

I thought that only happens when IIS is restarted. This is the only site I'm seeing it on, so is it possible that the 301's are causing it?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[webdude]

I have never seen this before. The only times that I get headers is on a restart of IIS. I am running IIS5, but I am not sure if that is the difference. If you are getting this on only 1 log file, it sounds like there is some other problem involved.

Are you seeing anything in your events log?

[webdude]

Or is it possible that the actual site in which you are seeing this is stopping and strating again repeatedly?

[beej]

I've never seen it before, either. Can't imagine what would cause the site to keep restarting - there's nothing in it but the permanent redirect instruction.