Redirects,temporary or permanant?

redirects, temporary,permenant,301,302

[ballada]

Can anybody help a confused gal over redirects. My webhost uses Cpanel where you can manage domains, add on domains and sub domains.

On the domain you have the option of temporary or permanant. On the add on you only have one option which is just redirect. Does anybody know if this is a temporary or permanant redirect. (I am still waiting for an answer from my hosting company)

Thanks guys.

Dominique

[Birdman]

Hello, I cannot give you the answer but I can tell you an easy way to find out.

Just set up any redirect in question, then go to the WW server header tool:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Enter the URL into the form and you will get the full header, which will give you the type of redirect along with other info.

[ballada]

Thank you for that I will try your suggestion.

Dominique

[ballada]

Hi Birdman, if you are still out there or if anybody else knows, I just tried a redirect and got this back :-

Server Header Check

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:35:33 GMT
Server:
Last-Modified: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:27:27 GMT
ETag: "2889d4-1fc-4532373f"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 508
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

I cannot figure out if this is a permanent or temporary redirect, how do I tell?

Thanks,

Dominique

[tedster]

It's neither -- it's a 200 OK. So they just made the new domain resolve to the content of the old domain -- which is unfortunately a common thing. This will create duplicate urls for each bit of content, and that can definitely get you into duplicate content trouble with the search engines.

[ballada]

Thankyou Tedster I will go and reverese immediately. Can you suggest another way around my problem please?

Dominique

[tedster]

Your registrar or your host needs to let you permanently redirect [301] the new domain to the old one. If you want the new domain name to resolve, then ask them for this service. From what you said in your first post, it sounds like you might need another "domain" account to allow a permanent redirect.

Or you can move your account to some other business who will offer it. It shouldn't require a full hosting plan for the new domain if you do not plan on hosting any unique content there, although that is what some services have told me they require in the past.

So ask your registrar/host. Many hosts seem not to understand this issue, but that situation IS changing, as it should.

A lot will depend on why you own the second domain. If it's just for type-in traffic, then the 301 redirect is good. If you are just protecting a brand name varint, or holding the domain for possible future development, then you don't really need it to resolve at all right now -- it can just be parked.

But you should not try to actively promote/market two domains that resolve to the exact same content. That can cause you no end of search engine trouble.