Multiple URLs pointing to same domain

Is this spam?

[ngoodman]

Our company has many urls pointing to the same domain. We dont go and submit these other urls in an effort to spam the SE's. We are mainly interested in protecting our product & related topics. We dont want some competing company to register a url that competes directly with our products. So we might register the .com, .net, .biz for our company name & point them to our main url. Then, even though our main url is www.our company name.com, we also register our product names as urls & point them to the main url.

1.) Is this spam?
2.) If so, how do we protect these urls without it being spam.
3.) Is there a recent SEO article you can point me to so I can convince the decision makers in my company that this is a bad idea?

[ukgimp]

Hello and welcome to WebmasterWorld

This is fine as an approach. As long as you dont promote the other domains you will be cool. To be doubly safe you only have to register them you dont have to use them.

Articles, hmm dont know, but if you do a site search (top of page) or two I am sure you will find what you are after in more details than I have given here.

Cheers

[TomWaits]

I think this can be interpreted as a problem by SE's only if you have incoming links that reference different domain names. If you have 10 links each for 5 of these domain names, then you could find yourself with a problem sometime. If you have 4 domains that are just sitting there being pointed at (not re-directs), but all the incoming links are the same domain name, it usually doesn't tend to be a problem.

If you're worried about it becoming a problem, buy the domain names but don't point them at anything.

[edited to add: above post written before ukgimp's post, but posted afterwards. At least we're thinking alike!]

[Robert Charlton]

In my experience, pointing multiple urls at the same domain always leads to problems in the long run. Check out...

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