Domain Forwarding

[DeCal]

Will there be a penalty for having

domain1.com
domain2.com
domain3.com
domain4.com

^--------------------- 123.123.123.123

Afew domain names pointing to the same site?
If so are there any ways around it?

 

[DomainPairs]

It depends what you mean by forwarding. URL forwarding sends the browser enquiry to a URL of your choice. eMail forwarding collects mail and forwards it to a different address. Some registrars charge for these services. Domain aliasing is done on your server and allows you to have multiple names for one site. This is usually free but depends on your hosting company.

 

[DeCal]

domain1.com points to 123.123.123.123 while domain2, 3 and 4.com all just forward to domain1.com

Would this cause a problem with search engines?

Would i get a penelties?

 

[DeCal]

Someone told me that a few search engines will class it as spam?

 

[TexasFilly]

What is URL forwarding and what is it used for?

URL forwarding is a method of redirecting your domain name visitors to another domain name (web site), for example your domain name: yourdomain.com can be redirected to anotherdomain.com and whenever your domain will be accessed, it will automatically redirect the visitor to anotherdomain.com.
URL forwarding is usually used by webmasters who use free web hosting and like to use their own memorable domain name instead of a long, confusing and hard to remember free web hosting internet address.
URL forwarding is also used by webmasters who use paid web hosting but need to host more than one domain on the same web hosting cutting the additional domain hosting fee.


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What is an Unmasked URL forwarding?

The unmasked or uncloaked URL forwarding is used when you want to simply redirect your domain name visitors to another domain name revealing the real address being redirected to on the top, for example if you setup an unmasked redirection to anotherdomain.com all the visitors to yourdomain.com will be redirected to anotherdomain.com which will appear on the top.


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What is a Masked URL forwarding?

The masked or cloaked URL forwarding is used when you want your domain name to appear on the top hiding the real domain name that is being redirected to, for example if you setup a redirection to anotherdomain.com all the visitors to yourdomain.com will be redirected to anotherdomain.com with your domain name appearing on the top instead of anotherdomain.com.
If you choose to use the masked forwarding you can also define (with no charge using our unique system) your own meta tags such as title, description, keywords and more, this feature is used to optimize your domain name search engines ranking.


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Is there any fee for this service?

No, This service is absolutely free.

compliments of www.cleverdot.com

 

[DeCal]

Wow! Very detailed, thanks, that has answered all my questions on the matter!

 

[DomainPairs]

Leaving aside the forwarding to ISP space, the main use of url forwarding is to forward to a sub-directory on another domain. If you are forwarding to the root directory, you would be better off aliasing. This would leave the original url in the address bar, and carry it through for subsequent pages.

You may not get penalties with search engines, but they do take note of IP addresses which of course would be the same.

Some registrars charge for this service. I am currently trying to get OnLineNIC to remove this charge. Some Hosting companies don't allow you to alias.

 

[adoptabledomains]

Originally posted by DeCal
Someone told me that a few search engines will class it as spam?

I have heard that some search engines will blacklist you for submitting[/] identical sites with the same domain name. I don't "think" they penalize if the robots find it though, since YOU did not attempt to go around their system. I wouldn't try to put multiple domains on one set of identical information and make multiple search engine submissions.

I do believe you can have domains resolve to different information (directories or subdomains) on a site and then submit each one since a compare of the data would be different at different starting points. After all, take a site like Tripod.com that has probably thousands of domains pointing at subsites on the main domain. Since each is different, they are considered indepenedent webs.

Therefore, I sometimes have domains resolve to different products in a domain structure and submit each separately. If multilple domains resolve to the root of the website, I only submit one of them to the engine. This seems to work for me, but no guarantees. I also really only care about the top 3-5 search engines...your mileage may vary.

 

[adoptabledomains]

Most discussion on this thread is about redirects, where the domain is entered in the browser and then redirected to another domain name or directory of a domain. Parking a domain is a totaly different animal in that the domain entered stays in the browser address bar and the data is identical in multiple domains.

An example is uwphotographer.COM which is a main hosted website. the domain uwphotographer.NET can be entered and resolves to the same data. If you travel through the website, the domain will remain the same as entered (unless an absolute URL is entered or on the page) but the subdirectories will change. relative URL's will allow the domain to remain as the surfer entered the site. uwVIDEOgrapher.com also resolves to the same place. I only submit the main .com to the search engines, but the other domains pick up type-ins.

On forwarded domains, you will see the hosted domain, unless they use "cloaking" which just buries the secondary domain in a hidden frame. In this case, you never see where you are in the subdirectories. Search engines could either be confused by the domain name change and not follow/spider what it considers an off-site link, or not associate content with the domain name you intended it it is followed.

 

[TopNames.com]

All 1000+ of my domains point to topnames.com...ENOM offers redirecting for free.

I also redirect in a frame...example is brawl.com...it looks like its on it's own server, but is actually on my ibuilder.org server.