Hi, Sorry but I posted this same question this morning under Site Administration and its getting no hits so I think I posted it in the wrong place to begin with... reposting here... ------------------------------------- We are in the beginning process of working with an SEO company and I have been told that having multiple domains pointing to the same IP (for the same site, mind you) is causing us not to be indexed by Yahoo (mostly) and the like... i.e. main site is www.longcompanyname.com -- but we have several items configed in the apache httpd.conf under ServerAlias like: www.mainproduct.com www.company.jp www.company.it www.shortname.com Some of the language ones are old and registered before my time, so could probably be dropped, but not others... They are saying that Yahoo considers this a no-no. Bottom line, does having multiple domains pointing to the same IP for the same site cause a Red Flag with some engines? How is this supposed to be done the proper way? Thanks Goose_68
You'll get hit by any duplicate content filters that exist. It's a pretty standard problem (encountered by many people). Personally, what I do is choose one main domain name, then redirect (301) all the other names to that domain. I know of no way to avoid hitting duplicate content in situations where more than 1 domain name needs access to the same web root - I'd be interested to here of any ways around this.
I have two legacy domain names, plus the non-www domain name variants, pointed to one of my domains. I am using MOD rewrite for this. Yahoo has sent it over twelve thousand visitors so far this month...
Hmmm perhaps a misunderstanding. There is only 1 site. e.g. www.mainsite.com ... were not talking about duplicate content here... ... now because of aquisitions and old legacy sites, we might also have these domains pointing to the same IP, and these domain names are set up as a ServerAlias of the main site domain: - www.othersite.com (goes to our site, but the domain continues to say www.othersite.com... maybe thats the problem) - www.one-of-our-products.com (goes to default home page) - www.XXXX.com (where XXXX is our nasdaq ticker symbol... not sure if this is common or not, but was in place before my time and they want it.) Sooo... is the problem here that when you go to 'www.othersite.com/about/' , which is really 'www.mainsite.com/about/', but the URL stays as www.othersite.com (because im not redirecting, but rather its an apache servername alias) ? Thanks and sorry if that was a jumbled mess of explanation... Goose
Goose, you want to 301 redirect any other domain name to the "real" domain name. Pointing more than one domain name to the same files is most likely going to get your other domain names banned or 'gray barred'. I have had this happen and it took me about six months before G started sending any traffic to it again (after I 301'd to it with the other domain and sent them an email). Now, about a year and a half later I am finally starting to take over my main KWs, which are kinda competitive. Long story short, don't do it the way you are talking about.
Here is the code from my httpd.conf which redirects geek-faq.com, www.geek-faq.com, and tech-faq.com to www.tech-faq.com using Mod Rewrite: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email]will@geek-faq.com[/email] DocumentRoot /Hosted/geek-faq.com ServerName [url]www.geek-faq.com[/url] ServerAlias geek-faq.com RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.tech-faq.com(:80)?$ RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.tech-faq.com/$1 [L,R=301] ErrorLog logs/geek-faq.com-error_log CustomLog logs/geek-faq.com-access_log combined ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/Hosted/geek-faq.com/cgi-bin/" </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email]will@tech-faq.com[/email] DocumentRoot /Hosted/tech-faq.com ServerName [url]www.tech-faq.com[/url] ServerAlias tech-faq.com RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.tech-faq.com(:80)?$ RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.tech-faq.com/$1 [L,R=301] ErrorLog logs/tech-faq.com-error_log CustomLog logs/tech-faq.com-access_log combined ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/Hosted/tech-faq.com/cgi-bin/" </VirtualHost> Code (markup):
Does it cost more to do the 301 redirect vs. a parked domain? Do servers need to set up the domain as a "real" site first in order to set up a redirect?
A 301 redirect is the preferred way to point one site to another. In fact, some ISP's actually mean 301 when they say parked. Of course, since you're redirecting a domain (301) to another domain, the domain to which you're redirecting should contain the content you want to appear under the redirected domain. You can of course redirect to any URL you like. Cheers, JL
what's the case with dynamic content? i have a ASPX site with multiple domains going into it and the content is built according to the domain you entered, but the IP remains the same (naturally). will this get me banned?
Operating across multiple domains, but from a single IP will be problematic. It's unfortunate for name based VHosts (the cheaper hosting alternative) but quite legitimate, as this is the typical ISP hosting arrangement. The problem is, it's commonly exploited, and the engines know it, so.. Firstly, the content needs to be different (VERY different). If you're using a template, and fetching content based on the domain name requested, then you need to ensure that: A. The Document Object Model needs to change (basically, inject markup with the content, not just the content itself) B. Do not link between the sites (important) C. Your content (ie once all markup is removed) needs to change progressively. That is, each page should grow. Not the same content with each index, nor completely different content with each index. Much like a forum or news site. Of course, even with the above, if any of the domains are related in terms of keywords or content, you're going to have trouble. Quite frankly, if you plan to deploy in this way, you should be rotating through different IP addresses - they don't have to be different C Class, just non sequential.. Hope that helps a little - others may also wish to comment on this.. there's always a new angle.. Cheers, JL
is this why my site was dropped out of yahoo. i had 3 websites on the same ip all 3 COMPLETELY different websites. all three of them at one point each had more than 1000 pages indexed in yahoo. now all 3 of them only show one, and they have completely disappeared in the serps for yahoo. if this is what happened to my sites what can i do about it? btw all three sites are on new servers now with their own ip address.
I parked 20+ domains on top of my main domain, the main domain was a PR4. The next PR update the PR dropped to a PR0. It stayed that way for another update so I removed the domains and parked them with a parking service. The next update my PR4 came back. I am not 100% sure this is why it dropped but I will never try that again.