Multiple Domain Names & IIS?, Just set it in IIS or 301 Re-Direct ... Options

[lee.n3o]

I'm slightly confused now... (Yes I know its not hard.. ) ...

I have a client and they have multiple domain names (About 9 ish)... They insist they want all the domain names pointing to their website - But on more than one occasion I have read that SE's really don't like this???

So what do I do... Usually the site is set up in IIS and the domains are just added in their... OR should I set up seperate pages in the root directory and set a 301 redirect on each domain pointing to just the default one??

.. Can someone let me know as I can't find a definitive answer anywhere .. - Thanks

[phaithful]

The domain names are simply aliases or easy marketing names, I would just have them DNS redirect to the same location.

No need to setup a root and 301.

The reason you would do a 301 redirect is to maintain your search engine ranking for those domains.

If those 8 other domains are not ranking for anything and really have no links pointed at them, threre's really no need to go through all that effort.

[Ron Carnell]

If those 8 other domains are not ranking for anything and really have no links pointed at them, threre's really no need to go through all that effort.

Yea, but that's a really big if.

It's not that search engines "don't like" aliased web pages so much as they don't want to index the same content more than once. When they do, you can be certain it's a mistake that will eventually be corrected. As soon as they recognize they are dealing with what is essentially duplicate content, they'll drop all but one domain from the index.

Which domain do they keep?

That's the gotcha that makes the IF really important. Generally, they'll keep the domain with the most important links pointing to it and drop the rest. But there's no guarantee of that. And even then, it's not something easily controlled. If people can get to an aliased domain, they can also link to it. Get just one great link from, say, bbc.com to a satellite domain and your main domain might well be dropped.

If you're confident the domain that YOU want to rank is strong enough to compete with the other domains then you, indeed, need do nothing. If you're not so sure, however, or just don't want to gamble, a 301 from all the domains except the one you want to keep in the index is the only certain way to control your own fate.

[lee.n3o]

Fantastic Ron.... Thanks for that... I shall go and ponder now....

[SEOEgghead]

This is the first time I've disagreed with Phaithful. Seriously, do a 301 or you may regret it. Simply pick a "primary" domain, and 301 the rest of them to that domain. It's a simple mod_rewrite fix, or you can use PHP to effect the same. Make sure that if you use a domain "Control panel" that offers redirects, that it uses a 301, not a 302. I believe GoDaddy (God bless your soul if you actually use them, for other reasons), uses a 302.

[phaithful]

Actually, my reasoning to do it at the DNS level as opposed to a 301 redirect is thinking forward to additional options a business may want to persue.

From my experience I have full confidence I can build up a single domain name ( Domain A ). Throughout that course I'll use various marketing avenues to build up these secondardy domains ( Domain B & C ) as either promotional deals or allow them to deep link to a specific semantically related topic, usually gaining a little of link love.

At any time I can either 301 redirect these domains ( Domain B ) to the primary ( Domain A ) at any time I choose if I believe Domain A either needs it or if I have no further intentions for Domain B.

However, the advantage of not 301 redirecting from the get go is, that I can now take Domain B & C and spin of sematically related sites that can either support, be affiliates, or be completely different sites of my choosing, all without having to start from scratch.

Basically I have options by doing it at the DNS level instead of telling the search engines that all my domains are the same site. This is especially useful when your are not sure what you want to do with you various domains in the begining.

In addition, this is useful when you have a very well established site, and you can leverage link building of different secondary domain names, using the great content you have at the established site to entice more linkage.

Also.... remeber, this is DNS redirection and not simply an alias. So when you type in Domain B... you will resolve at Domain A (just as when you type in www.gooooogle.com you DNS redirect and resolve to www.google.com)

This post has been edited by phaithful: Jul 24 2006, 01:54 AM

[JohnMu]

I'm not sure what you mean with DNS redirection - do you have a link explaining that a bit?

Looking at www.gooooogle.com you can see that it uses a simple meta-refresh redirect:

CODE

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="0; URL=http://www.google.com/">

It would be interesting to find out why it is doing this -- the domain name belongs to someone in Pakistan (not to Google), a 301/302 redirect would be cleaner and require less bandwidth... I don't know what the reasoning behind a meta-refresh redirect on that page is.

Looking at http://quinparker.com/?p=827 it appears that the Goo(ooo)gle you mentioned used to be a casino/spam page - perhaps they put that back up every now and then.

Unless your DNS redirection is something special that I haven't seen (which is always possible), you should be careful of placing the same content across multiple domain names. Not that you will get a duplicate content *penalty*, but even a duplicate content *filter* will often be enough to keep you worried (especially if you are not sure which URL will be indexed and which one will be filtered -- perhaps not even domain-wide).

John

[phaithful]

Hmm maybe I'm wrong here... (It wouldn't be the first time ) but that's how I've always used and understood my DNS interface. Basically instead of using a CNAME it's another A REC to a sub application server within my site.

Haha... I better go check my stuff out again

About the Goooogle thing... I'm definitely wrong there... should have checked the URL before posting it

Apparently the real Google domains that are really owned by Google such as ggoogle.com, Wwwgoogle.com, etc. are either CNAMEs or 302 redirecting.

[SokyBiz]

From experience, I can tell you that the search engines will trim the verge on their own. I had no less than 25 domain names pointing to one travel oriented website, I was well indexed, well represented and well ranked on results. Google, Yahoo, and MSN had me in the top five for the primary domain name which is what we published.

That said, I have to agree with the comment regarding having the ability to choose the domain you want in the results. Had I not put the domain name on the pages, it is likely that the results would have been much different. Which in hindsight is a good thing because one of the domain names involved nudity. (Well some people like to party naked.)

For control reasons, I would lean towards publishing your main domain clearly. If you want the site to work no matter the domain name, then be sure and write your links relative to the root... but that's another topic.

jimmysmithjnr, you apparently are an NT/IIS guy. There are ways to set up alias domains even on hosted accounts or through your registrar depending on your control panel. There is also a way to used the global.asa to rewrite the URL when the session starts. Drop me a line if you have a specific question.

Just my opinion.

[JohnMu]

Ah, ok if you are using CNAMEs then you're essentially just telling the client to use the same IP address -- what happens after that is still open, it could be anything from:

IIS-side:
- return the same content as the other site (eg not using host headers or allowing multiplie host headers for the same virtual server)
- do a 301 redirect domain-wide (or per URL, etc)
- do a 302 redirect domain-wide (or per URL, etc)

Code-side:
If the same content is returned, you can do the same on a code-side, eg have the code 301 or 302 redirect from specific URLs or domain-wide (provided you place the domain checks and redirecting code in all URLs).

If I were you, I would check to see which type of redirect you're doing (if any) . You can do that with a tool like my http://oy-oy.eu/page/headers/ . If you're just returning the same content, you might want to switch to a redirect instead. A 301 or 302 will probably be treated just about the same (cross-domain, certainly on Yahoo, probably on Google and perhaps on MSN as well (not sure about that though)). If you can, it would make sense to use a 301 redirect to the main domain you wish to promote.

Whatever the case, it makes sense to check what is really happening before you assume it's doing something . I don't know how many times I have been surprised to notice that a server of mine was doing something completely different to what I was assuming it was doing

John

[SEOEgghead]

I suspect that there's some truth to what Phaithful is saying. Using a CNAME is a sort of DNS-level "redirect."

An ANAME points a domain name to an IP, i.e.:
blah.com => xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

A CNAME points a domain name to another domain name, i.e.:
blah.com => webserver.blah.com

I never really thought about this, but it's definately a level of indirection. Unfortunately, a conventional application, using getHostByName() will never get this level of information; it's lost at the DNS level. Bind sees it. You don't.

So, while theoretically Google or any other search engine could look at the information and interpret it, I wouldn't have any confidence that it actually happens.

Just do a 301 IMO.

[Ron Carnell]

Domain Alias - The page returns a status code other than 3xx, typically a 200 code, and the URL does *not* change in the Browser bar.

Domain Redirection - The page returns a status code of 3xx and the URL *does* change in the Browser bar.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a DNS redirect, if only because there is no such thing as a DNS status code. Redirects have to be implemented at the web server level, i.e., on Apache, IIS, or equivalent

.

[SEOEgghead]

I never suggested there is, really. I was saying that DNS does have a form of redirection, but that I doubt anyone actually examines it -- even Google.

Anyone else care to speculate? A CNAME is kind of like a DNS-level 301. But to be honest, when I do DNS-configs, I usually just use a bunch of ANAMES. i.e.

www.example.com =A> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
example.com =A> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

And not,

example.com =A> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
www.example.com =C> example.com

I've never actually thought about this. And, Ron, there are DNS-level status-codes, more or less. We just never think about or see them because it's at a different (lower) level. getHostByName pretty much abstracts DNS from the programmer and only returns an IP. But more detailed information is available if you really want it.

And I'd still use a 301

This post has been edited by SEOEgghead: Jul 27 2006, 01:16 PM

[JohnMu]

SEO Egghead, I feel you are mistaken (it doesn't really matter, since as you say, nobody analyzes it ). A DNS CNAME is only a reference for the IP address, not the website.

Just an example, a server I inherited was set up to do virtual hosting (multiple separate domains on a single IP). The previous owner had set it up to have:

mybigserver.isp.com A aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd (IP address direct)
www.domain1.com CNAME mybigserver.isp.com
www.domain2.com CNAME mybigserver.isp.com
www.domain3.com CNAME mybigserver.isp.com
www.domain4.com CNAME mybigserver.isp.com
www.domain5.com CNAME mybigserver.isp.com

The client would access DNS, retrieve the correct IP (first finding the CNAME, then the correct A-record). It would send the proper request to the IIS running there; IIS would then use the IP + the desired domain name to serve the correct content.

The domains themselves were NOT related to another, they simply shared the same IP. The CNAME records were to keep things easy should the main IP address change (only the A-record would need to be changed).

There was no "redirection" or any other sort of relationship between the domains and the main server IP.

I hope that makes sense

John

[SEOEgghead]

You are correct that in the case of virtual hosting that it makes little sense, but I still do see it as a level of indirection. Anyway, we're beating the subject to death, and you gave one good example of why the information can be useless. Heh. If you think about it, though, it's saying ::dns lookup:: is really the same as this other ::dns lookup::. That's what I'm saying. It's kind of like a DNS-level "redirect."

Anyway, case closed. It's a moot point, I think.