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I have a problem...
I recently took over a site that has around 30 domain names all pointed to the same site. I currently host around 40 sites and handle my own DNS. I am worried that the G is going to frown on all these domains pointed to the site and am trying to work out solutions for the problem. I argued with the client about using just 1 domain, but they want all the domains to be used.
The person who set up this site submitted to many search engines via paid and unpaid. dmoz got one domain, hotbot another, yahoo another, msn another etc. etc.
The reason I was told for this type of set up is that the client wanted to track where the hits were coming from by domain name, screwy, I know, but I have to fix.
I thought that using a 301 permanent redirect would fix this, but I can't gwet it to work the way I want in IIS. Since there is only 1 site, when I set up the redirect, it just points to itself and loops.
Some questions...
I can get the asp redirect to work fine except the only way I can get it to work is by defining the whole URL including the /index.html. In other words, the redirect goes to:
[mysite.com...]
Is it okay to do this instead of [mysite.com?...]
I am also trying to get rid of the www before the domain name. Once again, if there is only 1 site, a redirect via IIS does not work. I just get "object has moved. I think this is because the redirect points to itself. Is this making sense?
I have been all over the web trying to figure this out. The only logical solution I can think of is to set up another site and change all dns to point to the new site and then use an asp redirect or an IIS redirect to point to the domain I wish (the original site).
Does anyone see any drawbacks to this (except, of course having to burn another ip address)?
Thanks
This actually works well to track different types of non-internet advertising.
This actually works well to track different types of non-internet advertising.
This is another reason they gave for the multiple domains. Different type of printed, radio and TV advertisements were given different doamins along wiht different phone numbers to call.
[webmasterworld.com...]
to set up the 301 redirect this way:
<%
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.addheader "location", "http://www.newdomain.com/newurl/"
response.end
%>
which I put into the scripts, combined with some calculations depending on HTTP_HOST. It worked out fine for me.
I would imagine that something similar would work in your situation, too. Feel free to sticky-mail me if you need additional help.
<%
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.addheader "location", "http://www.newdomain.com/newurl/"
response.end
%>
This is what I am doing now. Is there any drawbacks from G's point of view? Does it matter having the /newurl/ in the redirect?
Thanks
I had the same problem. I had to use a new filename, or else it would put the page into an infinite loop.
But this created another problem. Google will canonicalized all index.html, default.asp, index.asp etc to the base domain name. The googe bot will then go into an infinite loop (just like when you pointed to the original domain). A few weeks latter I was dropped from Google, and after a few exchanges on this board from Googleguy, we confirmed this was the problem, and a week after I took out the redirect, I was back in Google.
Im not sure if Google fixed this problem, but I would avoid trying what you are going to do, until I get confirmation from Googleguy that this bug has been fixed.
You may be fine if you avoid using index or default or something similiar for the filename for the {/newurl [alias filename]}, but I have not got the courage up to try it again, after getting burned the first time.
