Using a 301 redirect is the right thing to do. It is not spam, it is a legitimate practice. I have clients who 301 redirect thousands of domain names for purposes of trademark protection and retaining typo traffic. The other redirect methods you mentioned can cause troubles.

I do the same thing...It is legitimate. I use 301's from registrar so they not even on my server. I have over 90 domains most pointing to the same site. Keeps people from getting my .us, .org, .info and other versions of my name, etc., etc.

can you set 301 without a hosting? directly from your registrar how's that?

BTW what about parking? isn't that better?

Generally you can establish a 301 from your domain registrar (atleast I know that I can through mine).

Parking is OK, but I'd rather do a 301 and use it as a catch all for any type in traffic that may miss our main sites.

Yes, MOST registrars now have to where you can set it up as a 301 redirect now. I NEVER park a domain on my server...years ago I did and one site I had dropped completely from Google instantly, I learned from that one! OR, you can add another account on your server (dedicated server) and just put a 301 in the .htaccess file. From registrar is easier to manage and, I think, safest.

Can you clarify what the problem is with parking domains on your server? I have two unimportant sites and one very important site on my server, each under their own domain, plus a few domains parked there. That can cause a problem with Google?

Well, I parked the domain on the server...pointed it to that site and I guess Google thought it was the same site (duplicate/two sites exactly same it thought). So, I never do it anymore and only do it from registrar now...better safe than sorry.

Does Godaddy have the 301 option?

Last I checked, silverbytes, they did not. For any specific registrar, you should check with that registrar's tech support. Many of them now offer 301 at the domain level but they don't publicize it - you have to ask.

I just logged in to double check my Godaddy acount and I do have a 301 redirect option, but I'm not sure whether or not I had asked for the feature (would have been a few years ago if so).

Do the backlinks of the redirected domains count towards the backlink count of the main domain?

If a previously penalized domain is 301 redirected to another domain could the original penalty follow the redirect to the new domain?

[edited by: Hubel at 7:25 pm (utc) on Nov. 5, 2007]

I haven't seen those backlinks show up in a link: report, but I do see the effects in both PR and search terms.

I point multiple domains to the same site, but I use PHP to make sure the robots.txt tells the search engines to only follow one domain. I've had this problem before, and I have a client with the nightmare situation of having their 1400 page site split up in the SERPS between 4 different domains, and they are trying to pull it all back to where the proper products display on the proper domain, and like I said, it's gonna be a nightmare to get it all fixed. Probably take six months at least.

I see it works from Godaddy and guess for most of .com domains. Unfortunatelly some specific countries domains have not that option in proper registrar.

So what would be the correct way in that case?

If you're worried, I'd recommended doing a 301 funnel.

If you have 30 domains in addition to your website, 301 redirect names #1-29 to name #30 and then 301 name #30 to your website.

My experience is that backlink influence doesn't flow through a chain of 301 redirects. I know that it didn't in the past, but I havent' tested recently.

But if you are worried, don't be. I know of businesses that 301 redirect over a thousand domain names to one principal site. As long as you don't continue to market and get backlinks for the old domains, they see nothing unfortunate happening at Google.

I see a related spammy technique used here and there for the last couple of years.

The main site has links at the bottom of every page that point to more than a dozen different domain names.

Each of those other domain names simply serves a 301 redirect back to the place that you just came from.

If that isn't junk, then I don't know what is. I have no real idea what it is attempting to achieve. I guess it is trying to pass extra PageRank back to itself.

Can you do a 301 for a the non www version of your domain name at the domain registrar level?