Two sites on 2 address

Seasonal variations

[beakertrail]

I have a web site that provides seasonal services - Winter / Summer - breaking the year into 2.

The web site is www.xyz.com/summer and www.xyz.com/winter

If someone types in www.xyz.com then depending on the time of year they are redirected to a specific subfolder as above.

This uses a simple response.redirect command in ASP but I was wondering if a command such as this is better (changing each 6 months:

Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.addheader "Location", "http://www.xyz.com/summer"
Response.End

What would Google make of this?

Beaker

[claus]

With a 301, www.xyz.com would disappear in the serps and be replaced by www.xyz.com/summer/ or www.xyz.com/winter/.

You should use a 302 in stead - a 301 is for permanent changes, while a 302 is for changes that are temporary. As you change this rule two times a year i'd say it was temporary.

/claus

[Arctrust]

Hey Guys:

I am new to the wonderful world of webmasters....

I need some quick advice...please...

I have one site on Y and I have one single lonely page on a personal home page which I use to do different creatives to see what converts better.

The personal home page, I usually just leave out there to be found and sometimes I use that URL to an PPC ad.

The PHP also has a funky URL by the internet provider with our vanity url (storename-keyword.com) whereas the Y store is simply storename.com.

Can this cause any trouble and if so... how do I fix it....

Can someone tell me what a 301 redirect is and how do I use it and how do I code it if that is what I need to do?

Thank you so very much!

Arctrust

[claus]

Arctrust, a "301" is a way to make your web server redirect visitors from one page to another. The answer i gave above was related to the way Google handles these issues, as this is the Google forum.

You'll find a lot of specifics, even very detailled directions, in the Apache Web Server forum: [webmasterworld.com...] - also, you could use the site search on top of the page and search for "301 redirect".

As to "would it harm me?" - it's hard to say, as these vanity domains can be set up a lot of different ways. In general, if you use server based redirects (301 or 302) then the search engines should be able to understand which domain is the right one and which is not.

When problems arise, afaik, it's usually because the search engines will be in doubt about which URL is the right one for your site - this is what you should try to avoid, and the 301 is one tool you can use for this purpose.

/claus

[Arctrust]

/Claus - Thank you!

You have been very helpful!

Arctrust