Member Avatar for AycheKay

So I took over an existing website that has three domain names and only one actual web site (one hosting package). The DNS is setup so that going to takes you to the main website that we are and have been promoting -

We're using Windows IIS hosting (I'm using ASP) so we can't fix this by editing the htaccess file. Since the pzequipment URL's have been posted at a variety of places on the internet, google has indexed some of the site using the pzequipment domain name.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to fix this. Here's some of my own ideas that I don't like.

I could point it to a different folder on my web server so that all pzequipment url's become invalid, then design a custom 404 page that redirects to the intended location, or offers a link to the intended location. But for some reason I don't really like this idea.

I could just "unhinge" the DNS for that domain so that it points to no where and then wait six months for google to delete everything it has indexed.

Any more ideas?

Edited by Ezzaral because: n/a
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Member Avatar for AycheKay

Well, I did a bunch of research. First of all, using Google Webmasters Tools is not the answer to this problem. You can basically only choose between and . It doesn't appear to be possible to tell Google to look at pzequipment.com and automatically call it (or index it) as

I talked to Network Solutions next who is the hosting company and they said that they could do a 301 or 302 redirect on their end for those domains but the lady I had on the line was insistent that doing that was not the correct answer for this problem. She claimed that Google will still see my three sites as duplicate content if we made this change on a hosting level. Her suggested solution was to do it on a domain level.

So lastly, I contacted the company that holds our domain registrations. Their web control panel for our domain names does not allow us to do this sort of redirection so I had to submit a support ticket requesting them to redirect the our secondary domain names to the correct one using 301 redirects. Within approximately 24 hours they took care of this for us.

By the way, my research shows that Google prefers 301 redirects over 302 redirects. I don't remember where I read this but if you're dealing with the same question/problem, make sure you do your research about the difference between a 301 and 302 and how it affects your search engine indexing and ranking.

HK

Edited by Ezzaral because: Snipped urls.
Member Avatar for MidiMagic

Have the same home page on each site. Use absolute addressing to refer all of the other links to one of the sites, where the other pages are kept.

Member Avatar for seodomainnames

Get a Linux server. Not a MS fan for sure. There you can add a 301 redirect string to the htaccess file, and put in your domains as a domain alias. They will all permenantly direct to the chosen domain, with or without the www, whatever you choose.

Sounds like the site needs to be moved, not your fault he has a MS server for sure.

Google does recommend the 301, as that is permenant. 302 is a temporary redirect.

Good Luck!

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