Seo question pertaining to redirecting from a domain name

to blogspot.com blog

[SlimKim]

I know a guy who sets up websites at blogspot for the free web hosting and uses his own domain name (it can be done).

He reasons that some of the sites may have hundreds of concurent users and that he would need an extra dedicated server otherwise. He may be overly optimistic on that, but let's humour him along and comment on his real question.

Will his free listings at Google suffer from the redirect and will he be ahead to have them on his server?

They are only a few months old, but if you search for the exact domain name you find them listed at Google. So the redirect dose not prevent listing but will it hurt ranking?

Most of these domains are exact match for high value keywords, though some use hyphens. It's doubtful they will rank well anyways but he is looking to let them set a decade and look at them later.

Thanks

[encyclo]

Well, the answer depends on what kind of redirect he is using. Are you saying that the domain redirects to a blogspot URL, or that the blog is available under the domain name itself? Is he using framing or via server-side redirect, and if the latter is it a 301 or 302 redirect?

[SlimKim]

I don't know the differences between redirects ...

what he does in go to his registrar [enom]
chooses the name to redirect
changes dns server settings to enom servers
goes to enom host records
inputs CNAME (Alias) ghs.google.com

then goes to blogger.com and follows directions
to use your own domain name

actually blogger allows you to use their software and host the site on your own server at your domain name or they will continue to host it at blogspot if your prefer and redirect

should you try this at home, if you want to use blogger and keep the resulting site on your server, near as i can tell, you must create the blog / website through the advanced mode (use your own domain name) to begin with. If you create it at blogspot and then move to your own domain - it seems the redirect is the only option available

Thanks for your comments encyclo - i can pm you a sample url if it helps.

Slim

[SlimKim]

I'm guessing that redirect is not a hindrance. I created such a website on a new domain 5 days ago. And today it ranks # 3 at Google on the first page for my most important keyword string (3 words).

It ranks the same if i search within or without quotes. It's an obscure (or fairly new) term only showing 1390 pages indexed at google containing the exact phrase.

But what do i know - i still appreciate your comments.