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I've just read in the google guidelines, that one should not have multiple domains with the same content.
But for my site I do have several domains, with names that are relevant to our business. All of these domains point to our main page, i.e. display the same content. Will this get the pages banned from google, or is it ok? I don't mind if the other domains don't get indexed, as long as the main domain (where most inbound links are directed to) is indexed.
When a visitors goes to one of the other sites, do they automatically get re-directed to the main site? or is their actual duplicate content on the site they visit and then have to click to go the main site?
When you say make sure that all backlinks go to the main domain is this because of penalty reasons or to get better pr. If his main domain is widgets.com and he has bluewidgets.com forwarded to widgets.com could he actually be penalized for somebody else linking to bluewidgets.com. That would seem like it's out of his control.
Here is my dilemma.
I have a client hosting with me who decided to change the name of his company. That is after he sent out thousands of catalogues to his clients telling them to go the website to place an order.
Being ****scared of duplicate content on google I changed the original site to include a robots.txt on www.xyzcompanyLtd.com, disalowwing all robots all content.
and placed a copy without the robots.txt on the new site www.Myxyzcompany.com.
But this can not work in the long run. I'm talking about hundreds of web pages, thousands of products. I can't be updating both sites the whole time. It also creates a management chaos regarding email addresses, email forwarders etc. etc.
So here is the question:
Can I set up the old domain to be an alias of the new domain, effectively pointing to the same IP address without being banned from google?
301 redirects are not an option
I could use a global.asa to redirect any session request but am not sure of the effects on google and don't want to fall under the doorway page category.
Putting a "this site has moved" page up is not an option either.
I need to have a fully functioning copy of the website under the new domain and old domain. The user experience must not be hindered through annoying messages or sudden redirects.
The best option would be to alias the new domain on the old domain name. but I am scared. really scared.
any help appreciated.
Alx
The setup you have can work if only one domain is being promoted, but this doesn't sound like what is happening in your case.
Lot's of people will do this using various forms of a single URL to capture visitors who accidentally mistype the destination URL. This practice generally isn't a problem as only the main URL is every being promoted.
In your case, it sounds like you are promoting all (or at least 2) of the URLs. If this is indeed the case, I wouldn't recommend it. Some engines will see it as two different sites with dup. content and penalize at least one of the sites.
Google, on the other hand, generally merges the information from both URLs into one. In other words, it sees both URls as the same URL. Often dropping the one with the least PageRank.
Either way, the effect you are looking for...better rankings...won't generally happen as only one of the domains will generally be kept.
well, I'm not really keen on promoting all the sites. It is enough if one site has good ranking in search engines. Actually this is what I've been driving at in the past, promoting mainly one site. I agree that the other domains don't bother google if they're not promoted, i.e. not indexed. But it is not impossible to say, that links to the other domains may appear somewhere, or are still on my page by accident. So google will find the other domains somehow. So will this then be a problem, or will it then treat them as the same page (which is not a problem for me) ... as I don't care if a user finds my page once or twice, because I believe once is enough ;-)
PS: somehow the server of this forum was very slow, so my last post appeared twice... please excuse
However, I would do everything you can to keep links to the other URLs from occuring if you are going to keep the current setup.
Personally, what I would do in your case is use the .htaccess file and create a 301 redirect to the main URL from the other ones (a search of the forums on that will give you a good deal of info on how to do this). This will eliminate any possibility of a problem with Google or any other engine.
