Using extra domains to display main eCommerce site's content

[dlchicago]

Quick question (maybe)...

Alright, first thanks for the replies ahead of time!

I'm doing some simple SEO for a 5 year old eCommerce site that already ranks well for the targeted keywords. The guy has a bunch of sites set up to (within the DNS settings) point to the main site.

So for example, when you go to www.the-main-site.com, you get the real (original) storefront with the shopping cart and everything you need to make a purchase. Now www.the-second-site.com is set (within its DNS settings) to display www.the-main-site.com's content.

I have never dealt with cloaking, is this what this is? It seems to me that it is a form of cloaking and it's definitely creating some dup content issues...

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[tedster]

It's not cloaking exactly - cloaking means showing the search engine spider different content than you show the human visitor. But it is a poor idea and can cause problems. Much better to simply 301 redirect all those "vanity" domains instead of serving them with the exact same content.

It doesn't usually cause big problems, unless you try to actively promote the whole bunch. But it doesn't generate optimal use of the domain name assets, either.