I've got a friend who has been hosting his site with 5 different URLs - the content is the same. Each of the URLs have their own links, if he sets up 301 redirects will he a) be able to transfer the value of the links to his main site? b) avoid any google penalities If someone follows a link from a redirect is the switch from the requested domain to the main domain very fast?
a) yes, but it may take a week or two b) no penalties, but generally only one domain will remain in the index c) yes, it is instant
a.) If all the links go to the index page of each site and they are not search engine links they should keep clicking in. b.) all links should be permanent (301) and it will take a little time. If he has pages that are linked and most of us do he is going to need to redirect the individual pages or set up a custom error handler to catch the 404's and redirect them. I recently took over a domain that had this situation if you want to see this work type in my-e-space.net/any file name you want. This domain is currently parked on the dotcom version, redirected to the dotcom version and utilizing a custom error handler. Normally there is no delay in pages loads using redirects. The clunky redirects you see around the web are using a different style called meta refresh I think.
Just done some more investigation one of the sites is PR 5 while a duplicate site with a different url is PR3 so it seems to make sense to condense the links. Thanks for your help