Domain name pointer

will this get my site banned?

[dickbaker]

My client wanted to grab a domain name very similar to his current one, and after almost a year of waiting, I got it for him. The domain name he's had for over a year, and the one that he's been using, is www.acmecompany.com. He wanted to get www.theacmecompany.com.

Now that we finally got theacmecompany.com and got the DNS pointed to his actual site, if I type in www.theacmecompany.com, it shows up in the address bar exactly like that. I guess I was expecting a redirect to www.acmecompany.com

Is this going to cause problems with Google? Will they view this as substantially similar content?

If so, should I get the domain name moved to his current hosting company, and then create a page with a 301 redirect?

I'm very new to all this, so I hope my questions are clear.

[claus]

>> Is this going to cause problems with Google?

I really don't know at the moment. Definitely maybe. Don't submit the extra domain to Google, though.

>> Will they view this as substantially similar content?

Not substantially similar, it's 100% the same, ie. identical. It's a duplicate site. As both domains point to the same IP, perhaps they can figure it out and ignore it, and perhaps not. If they can, they will probably ignore the domain that has the smallest number of links pointing to it.

>> host / 301

You don't need to transfer the domain name to another host, as it's obviously working from the DNS.

To play safe duplicate-wise, you could put this in the root .htaccess file (a 301 redirect):

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?theexample\.com 
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This will also prevent your incoming link power from being spread across two domains in the case somebody should decide to link to the new domain.

/claus

[dickbaker]

claus, you've been more than helpful. Unfortunately, I only understand a portion of what you've written.

I don't want to beg your time any further, so I wonder if you could point me to a tutorial online on how said script works and how to actually implement it.

It's taken me months to get my friend's site into the top ten results for his chosen keywords. I'd sure hate to have Google decide they don't like this arrangement and undo everything I've worked on.

Thanks again for your advice, and your time.

[plasma]

[httpd.apache.org...]
[httpd.apache.org...]

[claus]

>> a tutorial online on how said script works and how to actually implement it.

The method requires that you use the Apache webserver and not Microsoft IIS. IIS has other ways of doing this. The official Apache documentation that plasma provided the links to might be too hard to digest. There's plenty of threads on WebmasterWorld on this subject, this thread is recent and has good information:

Site change of URL [webmasterworld.com]

See the details i wrote under ">> The .htaccess file" in post #12. It's basically the same thing you need to do:

(1) Make a plain text file in notepad and insert the above lines of code,
(2) upload this file to the server (in the top-level folder that holds the main "index.htm" or front page),
(3) name the file ".htaccess" (including the dot, nothing more than that).

That's it - three easy steps to make it work. Okay, you should of course also replace "example" and "theexample" with the right domain names, but i think you've already got that part figured out.

/claus

[plasma]

provided the links to might be too hard to digest

I knew that I've forgotten something :)