Comments on: Danger! Multiple domain names, 1 site - why it is bad

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:13:32 +0000

Yep, I definitely notice that right now. While two weeks ago about 52 pages of my primary domain were indexed, now there are only 4 left??
All my subdomains are indexed in google but only 3 or 4 pages instead of all pages.

I will need 100+ links to get those pages indexed I guess.

Few days ago I created a xml sitemap for each subdomaines so maybe this will speed up the proces.

gr,
Peter

By: theDuck

theDuck — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:49:30 +0000

Peter,

Subdomains (ie urls of the form subdomain.domainname.com) are a different animal altogether to subdirectories. Subdomains are seen as completely separate sites by Google - they are indexed separately etc.

If you have 5 subdomains with different content I’m not sure why you’d need a redirect at all under the context I’m discussing.

Subdomains are sometimes really difficult beasts to get indexed - it seems that (particularly if the primary domain is quite new) the ‘bar’ is much higher for subdomains - you need quite a few more incoming links to get a subdomain indexed than you do for an equivalent primary domain.

doc

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:12:01 +0000

Hhmmm after reading your reply on Erika I think I won’t be needing a 301 redirect eighter.

I got one site with 5 subdomains (they have their own urls) and they all have totaly different content but the maindomain is indexed and the subdomains still aren’t.
I have just set up the 301 redirect after reading your post here. We will see what will happen the next week(s)….

By: theDuck

theDuck — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:47:22 +0000

Hi Erika - in your case you’ve just got subdirectories of the same domain with different content. That’s perfectly OK and you’re right - no need for 301 redirects.

Matt

By: Erika

Erika — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:18:40 +0000

I have to say I really like your website. It’s clean, tidy and easy to read.
So many I’ve seen are too colourful, too many things flashing, too busy. My eyes go round and round in my head. In fact, I think I’ll change my templates right now.
I have a main site “ceconn.com” and the following blogs:
ceconn.com/canwetalk
ceconn.com/saycheese
ceconn.com/whatsmellssogood
Would the 301 redirect apply to me? Probably not.

By: shambhavi

shambhavi — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:29:00 +0000

Hey Matt!

We just put up this cool splash page, and I was wondering about just this VERY question you address. Psychic? I think so.

I wrote to my registrar, and they suggested using Website Forwarding in order to redirect the .com and .net versions to jayakula.org, the main entry page. Is there anything objectionable about this from your wise persepctive?

Hope you are well and only free-falling out of airplanes for fun.

OM OM OM
Shambhavi

By: Spencer

Spencer — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 01:47:52 +0000

Interesting article, we actually registered multiple variations of our URL but now i’m wondering whether that was the right thing to do. I’ll be following your advice with the 301 direct. Thanks for the info.

By: theDuck

theDuck — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:39:55 +0000

Chris - I’m discussing a different animal altogether.

If you have a business that you are trying to target to different audiences, certainly registering country specific versions of your domain can be worthwhile for SEO purposes - I do it with one of my commercial sites.

But, even then, having exact duplicate content on both those domains is going to kill your rankings too, just as I have described here.

By: Chris Hunt

Chris Hunt — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 08:06:29 +0000

It makes a bit more sense if you’re outside the US - registering both mycorp.com and mycorp.co.uk for example, but even then it’s only really worth it if “mycorp” is a known brand.

.biz domains and their ilk are just worthless anyway.