__/ [David Ball] on Tuesday 14 February 2006 05:45 \__
Disclaimer: nobody knows for sure how crawlers/search engines were
implemented, what they penalise for and to what extent. Speculation based on
experimentation and inferences from Webmaster guidelines is all you will
get.
> Hello,
>
> Should you re-direct them and if so, what's the recommended way? BTW,
> I'm on a WHM/Cpanel server, but I can SSH in and directly edit
> httpd.conf or .htaccess files.
I think the latter point is irrelevant to both the Webmaster and the search
engine. cPanel allows access to .htaccess and I don't know if re-defining
anything in httpd's behaviour is worthwhile. It would not affect what the
search engine /see/, but only the speed pages get delivered. The recommended
way is a redirection with status 301. This might imply, however, if used
excessively, that there is domain name spamming. Take care if you go down
that route. *smile*
> Should you just not put up a website for the other top level domains?
What if everyone did this? If it /already/ misused? Large businesses protect
domain names and thereby reduce the size of the namespace (look up
g00gle.com for example). ICANN manages larger tables, which also has a
negative effect on DNS. It also poisons, 'noisifies' and deters meaningful
analysis of the Web. If search engines do not penalise for this already,
they should. Bear in mind that localised Google sites deliver *different*(
content.
> Should you just put up a page saying "you want the .com, not the
> .info", without actually linking to domain.com
That's a possibility, if you can afford the hosting and registration bills.
At least your capturing of domain names would not be detectable to a bot.
> While I'm at it, is it ok to have both www.domain.com and domain.com
> point to the website? That seems to be the default way control panels
> usually set the DNS up on servers.
Try to reduce the effect of URL 'duplicability'. Merge the two if you do not
do not do so already. There are simply scripts to achieve this in
dynamically-generated sites and you can also re-write (not redirect) URL's
if necessary. You otherwise 'leak' ranks -- both traffic-based and
backlink-based -- irrespective of your intention.
> Thanks,
>
> -- David
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Yes, I know, but does it run Linux?"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
6:25am up 28 days 1:26, 13 users, load average: 0.45, 0.55, 0.63
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms
|
|
