OK to redirect multiple domain names?

[raymondcc]

Let's say I have a website called abc.com where all the content is published on that domain.

I also have a few others such as abc.net, abc.org, abc.cc, abc.asia, abc.tt, abc.tv, etc that shares the same name but on a different TLDs.

Question is, is it OK to do a 301 permanent redirect of the multiple TLDs to abc.com?

[tedster]

It certainly is OK. I do it a lot for brand name protection, typo handling and the like.

keyword.com - canonical domain
keywords.com - 301
keywords.org - 301
keword.com - 301

etc, etc.


It's also a good way to handle a business acquisition. I know of one business who owns 1300 domain names that all redirect to their core name.

Just one word of caution - only do marketing for the canonical domain name. That is, don't try to promote the ones that redirect.

[phranque]

ideally those domains would be configured as alias hostnames for your canonical hostname.
with apache you can do this using the ServerAlias Directive:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/core.html#serveralias

this way all canonicalization redirects occur in one hop and you avoid redirecting to an error response.

[raymondcc]

Thanks for the confirmation.

[sbook]

and if i own www.domain.com
and also have www.sofa.com , www.chair.com, www.table.com
these ones have penalities and worthless backlinks.

can i redirect them to www.domain.com/sofa , www.domain.com/chair ? Will www.domain.com get some penality regarding that?

any comments?

[zehrila]

sbook, penalty will transfer, but if you redirect these penalized names to urls like sofa.domain.com chair.domain.com then it might not affect the whole website.

[tedster]

these ones have penalities and worthless backlinks

That definitely changes the situation for the worse. If you owned those penalized domains, then you can't ask to have the previous record reset to zero, the way you can with a change of owner. And to claim to be a new owner of a domain that you then 301 is very suspect, too.

You're playing with contaminated goods in a case like this, and you can easily spread the contamination. It's better just to dump the contamination sometimes. Swallow the loss and move on, lesson learned. And still keep an eye on the penalized domains from time to time. They can recover just based on time alone - but it can be years.

[bobsc]

I know of one business who owns 1300 domain names that all redirect to their core name.

That "should" raise a red flag. Sounds like something a spammer would do.

[lucy24]

1300 !? How long is the name, that it's got 1300 possible typos and variant forms? For their own sake they'd better be based in a country that speaks a massively inflected language. ("widgets dot com? Oh, wait, maybe it was two-widgets dot com. Or was it two-future-widgets dot com? Oh! Silly me, I remember now, it was the-potential-for-one-person-to-produce-three-or-more-widgets dot com. No wonder I keep getting redirected.")