Duplicate sites... on 100 domains we own

[subzer019]

Hi

I have just discovered that our network infrastructure department have somehow in the last 3 - 4 months pointed all the domains we own (roughly 100) to our main website. I.e there is an live copy of our main website on all these domains.

If you do an site:{otherdomain.com} command in Google most of these domains are indexed in Google.

I am going to get them to remove this and just park the domains.

I would just like to know your thoughts on if this will contribute to an Panda penalty or if this would effect my site negatively as part of the Google Core Algo? The difference obviously being recovery time.

Thanks

[Robert Charlton]

You can add mod_rewrite to permanently redirect all of these domains to one canonical form of your main domain, which should take care of the problem.

If you're on Apache, our Apache forum has many samples of the code you should use, and could help you if need be.

You should check that A-records were use to "point" these domains to the IP address of your main domain (as opposed, say, to using Cnames). Then use mod_rewrite to 301 redirect them all.

For all sorts of reasons, I wouldn't park the domains. 301 redirecting is by far the best way to get rid of the duplication situation. Don't use 302s.

[Shai]

Agreed with the above assuming that the domains don't have a 'shady' history. Check their link profile if any before redirecting.

I am also assuming the domains are relevant as I'm not so sure I'll be comfortable redirecting 100 obviously unrelated domains to the main site.

assuming the worst then I would say it is definitely something that will raise a few eyebrows and alarm bells if I found the redirects while doing an audit on the site.

[Robert Charlton]

assuming that the domains don't have a 'shady' history

Shai makes a good point, and to heed his caution and take it slightly further, make sure that your network infrastructure department hasn't in any way built backlinks to these domains.

I've worked with sites that have had 50 or domains 301ed to them, with no problems since they hadn't been previously promoted. A corporate site for a product might buy every unregistered domain name they can think of that might otherwise work for a competitor, just to keep them off the market. Not something I think is going to help them in SEO, though sometimes they think it will, but I've observed no harm.

This could be a problem, though, if there are backlinks attached. Whether "good" backlinks or "bad" backlinks, they can look shady if they're promoted and then redirected.