Controlling links with a 301 redirect

[maximillianos]

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking for some advice and I'm not sure if this is the right category to post... but I'll give it a shot.

What is best practice in regards to handling subdomains (ie - *.mydomain.com). For years I have allowed any subdomain typed in to point to my main IP/site. It would leave URL of the subdomain name in the browser, I did not do any redirecting. Over the last year I was penalized by Yahoo and am no longer receiving traffic from them. Upon further review, I found my site was being indexed by the strangest subdomains that I never even used as a link on my site. For instance:

www.www.mysite.com
service.www.mysite.com

Etc.

I'm wondering if this was possibly giving me problems with search engines and their duplicate content penalties? I also had all my TLD extensions pointing to the same site/IP (.org, .net, etc). These also seemed to be indexed separately in Yahoo (though I never promoted them or linked to them).

Just recently I have created a 301 redirect for ANY sub-domain request to be forwarded to my main url (www.mydomain.com). I also disabled the IP resolution of all my domain extensions (.org, .net, etc).

My question... is it acceptable or good practice to configure my web server this way? Or should I be having all subdomain requests not forward to my main URL?

Thank for any advice.

[caveman]

The subdomain and other TLD versions of your domain are all technically different sites. IF you did not 301 them to the main site, but instead just pointed them, the net result is that you were fielding different sites. I've seen some people get lucky with this mistake if it's limited, but in your case I can't even count how many duplications of your site existed, and especially since some were subdomains, it's no wonder the site got into hot water.

Not sure what the reason is for redirecting subdomains back to the main homepage but I'd probably nix that approach. Don't see any problem with redirecting a handful of other domains to the main site, IF the domains get type in traffic that you want to capture (or have inbound links).

[maximillianos]

Thanks for the advice Caveman. I've struggled with the subdomain issue. I see some sites (like epinions for instance) that do a redirect from various common mistyped subdomains (wwww, wwwww, etc) and a few other common words that might get typed into a subdomain. But then other sites (like Google) don't even redirect the wwww.google.com version. So one would think I should follow G's footsteps... but I do have some old subdomains out there that are still used in inbound links. If I no longer support the subdomain sections they point do, is it okay to still have those subdomains redirect to my homepage?

Thanks again for your response.

[caveman]

No one knows for sure.

My general rule is as long as you don't overdue it and it's not malicious or trying to dupe the SE's then it's cool. Your example seems fine to me, personally. In fact if others have contrary experience I'd love to know.

It's the kind of thing that if I later find that the SE's ARE penalizing it, we try to raise the issue, perhaps build consensus, and call the issue to the attention of the SE's. They listen more than some people think. They may not always agree, but they listen. (IMO it's one of the great services sites like WebmasterWorld provide...not only do we try to help each other inside of the webmaster community, but we also try, as the SE's do, to keep an open dialogue between webmasters and the SE's. Good reason to go to the conferences too.)

;-)

[Robert Charlton]

maximillianos - So you're saying, I think, that you previously allowed all wildcard subdomains, and that now you're redirecting them to www.yourdomain.com, which sounds correct.

Until recently, in fact, I'd been setting up all client sites with wildcard subdomains and redirected them to www, to catch typos. This works fine except for one recently discovered glitch... that the redirect won't work if someone leaves a leading space in the url. Now, I just specify, say, w and ww and maybe wwww and redirect them to www.

See this thread...

301 rewite for all improper server prefixes
%20www. redirect
[webmasterworld.com...]

But, a question I'd ask about your particular setup is: how many of these subdomains have you actively promoted and gotten links for? That's where the spam problem comes in. If it's a small number, you're probably OK. If it's a big number, it may look spammy and you may have some problems.

[maximillianos]

Thank you both for your feedback. I don't have too many subdomains from the past that I am redirecting. There really is just 2 that I am interested in forwarding (or not losing the traffic). The content they supported is still available on my site, just not using the subdomains anymore.

I struggle with removing the redirects since my site has been growing very well lately in G's engine. But maybe it is just one of those things I should just buck up and do... take the hit now for a safer tomorrow?

Thanks again for your help.

[caveman]

maximillianos, when I commented about losing the subdomains, I frankly wasn't thinking about wwww types (I was thinking bluewidget.example.com types which is why I wasn't getting what you're doing).

Speaking for myself, I'm leary of doing lots of specific 301 redirects from subdomains, but if you're doing a limited number, or using a wildcard, I personally don't think that is a problem. Never seen it be a problem anyway.

Robert thanks for that link. Never saw that thread. Don't know what we'd do around here w/o jd. :)