Forum Moderators: phranque
I need to know whether search engines see the practice as equivalent to a 301 redirect. I would think that stealth forwarding at the domain host control panel is not an SEO best practice.
A client has three domains A, B and C, all at the same domain host. The Web site lives on Domain A. The actual Web site is hosted at a third party company.
That domain host offers stealth forwarding and standard forwarding. Domains B and C were set up to stealth forward to the same domain A, where the actual Web site lives.
This means that when a user types in either A or B, the Web site on A is displayed-- but whichever domain was typed in remains in the browser's address box. So unless you know about stealth forwarding, it looks like there are three duplicate sites, under three separate domains. That happened to me.
This is all new to me. Now, if this is OK with the search engines then so be it. But
The domain host also says that their "standard forwarding" functionality forwards to domain A, but domain A is displayed in the browser's address box this time.
Does Google, Yahoo or MSN have a problem with either stealth or standard URL forwarding?
Wouldn't skipping all this and just have the Web hosting company do a conventional 301 redirect be the best practice?
People use it in marketing, online advertising, and other things not so good.
Not a good thing to do if you want a site to rank as it will cause issues on down the road.
standard URL forwarding usually is a 302 and yes it is not good either.
The best way is a true 301.
The Web hosting company has sold the client on these stealth forwarding schemes. And, of course, they're implying I'm an ignorant peasant for questioning them. LOL.
