Multiple Domains and Search Engines

There are several website owners who are making inappropriate use of multiple domain hosting. Unfortunately for them, they are also crippling their very own search engine rankings by blatantly violating the guidelines established by the search engines that matter the most. Site owners today choose to register multiple domains for various reasons, including the following:
- They want to secure a brand name or trademark from competitors.
- They want to expand their web presence across different niche markets.
- Domain names are incredibly affordable.
Some people also register more than one domain for misguided reasons, including the belief that pointing multiple domains to the same location will result in higher search engine rankings. What many do not understand is that search engines despise duplicate content and the automated programs they send out to index your pages cannot determine whether you fall under the category of innocent and uninformed, or deliberate and blatantly manipulative. Those websites that ride this line should expect to be treated equally and to your disadvantage, you can be heavily penalized or even banned from the search engines for not knowing right from wrong.
Understanding the Guidelines
As someone trying to promote a website, you should know that search engines do not openly publish their guidelines as they do not want to give away too much information. However, there are a few rules that have been established which are directly related to multiple domains. These guidelines are quite simple: do not try to manipulate the index through sneaky redirects and cloaking and do not create multiple pages or domains that contain overwhelming duplicate content. So, what does this mean to you? Well, it should at least you know that there are some notable disadvantages to having multiple domains, especially if you do not remain cautious of duplicate content. Should you make the mistake of having the exact same content on multiple domains on the same server, you could be in serious violation of search engine guidelines. When this occurs, it does not matter what your intentions were, because you could still find yourself banned from the index. This not a great way to starting building your web presence at all.
Check Your Content
When it comes to questionable SEO practices, not knowing about the search engine guidelines is no excuse. Sadly, an alarming number of web hosting firms and designers are not aware of how to properly use multiple domains. This results in numerous website owners who unknowingly hinder their site’s ability to be indexed and placed in the rankings. Our advice to anyone who has more than one domain is to investigate and find out how they have been set up. If you have two similar but slightly different domains showing the same content, you could have a problem on your hands. In the end, your quest to maintain visitors could prevent you from leveraging some of the most significant potential traffic of all – the millions of web surfers that find what they need via the search engines.