Domain Redirects

What is the best method?

[pageoneresults]

I have a client who has over 250 domains in their portfolio. They now want to take 60 of them and redirect to the main IP address. The site is hosted on a Windows 2K server with IIS 5. I'm informed that I have four options;

Option I
C name pointing to A record through DNS

Option II
Unique IP's for all 60 (expensive)

Option III
Something to do with the Host Header

Option IV
Custom 404 (per NFFC)

I'm looking at Option I and wanted to get some input from the gurus here at WebmasterWorld.

No, these domains will not be submitted to the SE's. These are domains that people are typing into their browser address windows and we'd like them to resolve to the main IP.

Thanks in advance for your input!

P.S. Am I asking for trouble setting up these redirects? Will the SE's penalize?

P.S.S. For you .asp gurus out there, any idea how this one works?

<%
if Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") = "www.domainname.com" then
Response.Redirect "./content-page.htm"
end if
if Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") = "domainname.com" then
Response.Redirect "./content-page.htm"
end if
Response.Redirect "./index.htm"
%>

All requests for domainname.com or www.domainname.com were redirected to the content-page.htm which then appeared as a index.htm to the spiders and users. I tested submitting a few domains to AV (back then) and sure enough, it worked like a charm.

This setup was done by a previous host who is no longer in business. There were over 40 redirects in that file, I just pasted a snippet for your review. We haven't been able to figure out the entire set up. There was something done on the server side and I'm going to guess that it was through the Host Header option. Any suggestions?

This file also resides in the root directory:

<!-- This example displays the content of several ServerVariables. -->
ALL_HTTP server variable =
<%= Request.ServerVariables("ALL_HTTP") %>
HTTP_HOST server variable =
<%= Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") %>

(edited by: pageoneresults at 9:02 pm (utc) on Jan. 14, 2002)

[pageoneresults]

I can't let this one sink to the bottom. Anyone out there who could provide assistance? It would be much appreciated!

[NFFC]

Reading between the lines, if you are looking at pointing 60 domain names at the main domain then I would avoid that. Point the 60 domains at a unique IP and domain name which is seperate to the main domain.

How you deal with directing them to the main domain is a matter of choice, custom 404's are an undervalued option imho.

[pageoneresults]

Hmmm, never thought about the 404 option, I use that now for reorganizing directories and changing file names.

If I point the 60 domains to a unique IP, I'm going to assume that I need a site there that has content, is that correct? Links from that site would then point to the main site?

I'm trying to avoid additional click throughs for the user. I like the 404 idea and will add that to my list of options, thanks NFFC!

[NFFC]

>that has content

No, just a custom 404 which in effect is the target page, throw some robots.txt up there too. I'm assuming you want the type in traffic but want to avoid the chance of some SE's seeing 61 dupe domains.

[pageoneresults]

NFFC, your assumption is correct in regards to wanting the type in traffic. I do not want the se's to see dupe domains.

How would you have your robots.txt file set up for this?