Can I have multiple domains pointing to my original domain?

Discussion in 'Hosting Services / Control Panel' started by Owen Ransen, Apr 20, 2014.

  1. I've bought a domain and hosting from DiscountASP.Net, and now further names have come to me for the service I'll offer.

    Can I register the new domains with you and have them point at my original domain/server/thingy?

    (I know you use OpenSRS in reality, but I'd prefer to do it with you, plus it seems that OpenSRS is aimed at resellers, which I am not. )
     
  2. RayH

    RayH DiscountASP.NET Lackey DiscountASP.NET Staff

    Yes, but you'll also need to add the additional domains as domain pointers.
     
    Owen Ransen likes this.
  3. Thanks...but can't work out how to order the domain (on it's own).

    (Presumably somewhere I order the Domain Registration, then the Domain Pointer, then point the new domain to my existing one. I suppose I follow the instructions of the first section of...this page?)

    By the way how will google treat the second domain? Any penalties that you know of?
     
  4. RayH

    RayH DiscountASP.NET Lackey DiscountASP.NET Staff

    To order the domain name, just open a support ticket to our Billing Department. We can only register these domain names at this time. Regarding Google, I'm not sure. I don't think there are any penalties. They would probably treat it as a different site.
     
    Owen Ransen likes this.
  5. Jmeeks

    Jmeeks DiscountASP.NET Staff

    There is no penalty from Google on domain pointers.

    Google will see each domain as it's own site, and will rank them appropriately as long as the content for each domain is different.

    If the content is the same (or the pointer domain is just pointing to your root), then you have the issue where Google will only show the domain that it feels is the original domain for the content in question. This isn't a penalty, just a headache if the domain name Google chooses isn't the one you want to be found for. The best solution for that is to use a rel="canonical" tag in your header to denote which domain is the one you want found for that content.

    The tag for something like that would look like this:

    <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" />
     
    Owen Ransen and mjp like this.
  6. Magic! Thanks for the info.
    Thanks, I've done it. A pity you can't do .eu domains though...
    Even google explains it...so it must be good.
     
  7. Unfortunately I've just read that canonical only works within the same site, between different ways of accessing the same page in different ways... See slide 9 of this.
     
  8. Jmeeks

    Jmeeks DiscountASP.NET Staff

    When they first rolled out the canonical tags that was true. The blog post you found was done by Matt Cutts when they first introduced canonical tags so at the time it was correct.

    However in December of 2009 they started to support cross-domain canonical tags. An article from when it was introduced can be seen at SearchEngineLand (http://searchengineland.com/google-supports-cross-domain-canonical-tag-32044). Google also did a blog post about the support (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html)
     
    mjp and Owen Ransen like this.
  9. I'm still in a bit of a muddle here, though I've looked at those pages.

    I have www.letiketa.com, www.euenergylabels.com and www.euenergylabel.com all pointing to the same site. I'd like google to consider all the pages on that site to belong to www.euenergylabels.com.

    Do I have to redirect in some way each individual page? That would be very awkward for me.

    Or can I say "when you see www.letiketa.com and www.euenergylabel.com consider these as www.euenergylabels.com"

    If you see what I mean....
     
  10. Jmeeks

    Jmeeks DiscountASP.NET Staff

    Since they are all pointed to the same site, there is no redirecting that you need to do. You would only need to use the tag on the one page:

    <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.euenergylabels.com" />

    This will tell Google (and the other search engines), that even though you may see this page/content under multiple domains, the content is owned by www.euenergylabels.com
     
    mjp likes this.
  11. There we are! I don't understand this:

    "You would only need to use the tag on the one page"

    Say I have 20 pages do I put that tag on all of them or only on the index.htm page? If it is always the same tag on the various pages it is a doddle...
     
  12. Jmeeks

    Jmeeks DiscountASP.NET Staff

    Anywhere you are going to see an issue with duplicate you should put that tag. So for each page the tag would need to also be updated reflect specific page URL. So for example, a "Contact Us" page would look like this:

    <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/contact_us.aspx" />

    Definitely time consuming and a pain, but currently this is the only fix that search engines offer as a way to denote which domain name is the owner of the content in question.
     
    mjp likes this.
  13. So, for example, in my index.htm page I'd have to put this in the header:

    <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.euenergylabels.com/index.htm" />

    even though "originally" it was "in" http://www.letiketa.com ? And so on for all my other pages. Argh...

    I'm wondering if this is really a "duplicated content" problem. The page, index.htm, is physically the same, it's just that it gets pointed at from three different domains...
     
  14. Jmeeks

    Jmeeks DiscountASP.NET Staff

    Yes, that is how the tag would have to look, if that was going to be the URL you wanted to have considered as the original source.

    And yes, this is a duplicate content problem. However as I mentioned before what Google will do is decide for you which domain they believe is going to be the originator of the content, which may not be the domain you want. So the rel=canonical tag will tell Google which domain/URL is the one you want to be considered as the original source URL for the content.
     
    mjp and Owen Ransen like this.
  15. Ok, thanks to all of you for your help.

    I'll see what domain finds me at then decide what to do. Hopefully since www.euenergylabels.com is in my google web master list and analytics stuff that will help them choose the right one...
     

Share This Page