Google Penalize for Multiple Domains?

clarifying google's policies on legitimate practices

[chadmg]

Can someone please clear up a concern for me? I have purchased three domain names. One of them is the main url, which points to my host and the other two just do a server-side redirect to the main url. I am still in the process of building my site, so I have no external links to any of the three domains, but somehow google has found all three domains and indexed my index page using all three domain names. All with exactly the same content except for text displaying the current date.

This was not my intention since I thought google was smart enough to figure out the redirect and it would only use the redirected url in the index. But now when I search for certain keywords all three domains appear as the top three results with the same content.

My question is, will I be penalized for this? I am certainly not intending to do this to spam google. Or is this completely legitimate and google will eventually figure everything out?

[Marcia]

>>other two just do a server-side redirect to the main url

Are they 301 or 302 redirects? And can you find that Google has indexed any of the interior site pages also?

[dirkz]

For this to work properly without problems you need 301 redirects to your main domain. Otherwise there could be unexpected results.

If it's a 301, it could take some time for Google to figure it out correctly. I have seen two sites dropping completely (well, except for the index page of one) for a while (I think it was 14 days) after doing a 301 (both sites dropped out of the index, the one redirecting and the one redirected to).

[chadmg]

I'm not 100% sure since the redirect is done by the company who I registered the domain with, but I believe it's a 301. Is there a way for me to tell?

There are a few interior pages that are indexed by googlebot, and they all have the correct domain. All three domains are the top three in the results for certain keywords, but they aren't competitive and they aren't commercial. So am I correct to assume that I will not be penalized for this if it's a 301 redirect?

Lots of legitimate businesses do this with common mispellings or alternate spellings of their company. And it's not a link farm or anything since it only has one command.

[dirkz]

but they aren't competitive and they aren't commercial. So am I correct to assume that I will not be penalized for this if it's a 301 redirect?

I doubt that being non-commercial plays any role in that.

It's often quite costly to assume, I would use the Server Header checker on searchengineworld.com to make sure.

[chadmg]

Thanks for suggesting that tool dirkz. I was wrong, they are using a 302 redirect.

So my question has changed slightly... will using 302 redirects produce duplicate results on google and lead to google eventually getting rid of some or all of the duplicates?

[dirkz]

will using 302 redirects produce duplicate results on google and lead to google eventually getting rid of one of the duplicates?

Quite usually they do, sometimes results are weirder. It always means problems. There are several other threads on this. If several domains point to the same content, there's no alternative to a 301 in Google terms.

[Marcia]

The redirects I've seen done by domain registrars have been 302's - temporary redirects, which is to be expected of them. You don't want 302's, you want 301's.

Server Header Checker [searchengineworld.com]

[chadmg]

Thanks for your help dirkz and Marcia. I will contact them and try to change it to a 301. I've come to realize that even though what I want may be legitimate if I want google to like me I better play by all of its rules, even if they aren't ideal.