If I'm using 301 redirects not for PR or linking, but for type-in misspellings, will the base url be penalized?

For example, if I point "www.iloveyou.com", "www.eyeloveu.com", and "iluvu.com" (all of which are 'empty' domains) to "iloveyou.com", will iloveyou.com be penalized? (This is not a real example.)

I am concerned that this might be seen as spammy by the search engines, even though there is no content or PR on those other domains - hence the 'vanity' redirect. This is purely for the human user who may have spelling problems.

Any experience or advice? Thanks in advance.

That is the proper way to do it. Just make sure the headers return a 301.

I'm currently using internal redirects, which I'm sure seem spammy for the search engines.

Example: A user types in www.iluvyou.com, and actually goes to www.iluvyou.com (not the base url, www.iloveyou.com) which has identical content and links as all the other vanity domains. All links on all vanity domains point to the same places on the base url. So, "Marry Me" on www.iluvyou.com and www.eyeloveu.com both point to www.iloveyou.com/marryme.

So - I guess the vanity domains are not 'empty' so much as empty of different content - which is why a 301 redirect seems better than having all these duplicate sites out there.

Hope that clarification helps. (Also note - all search engine submissions, link requests, etc. use www.iloveyou.com, not any of the other domains.)

I've been using 301s for a few years now on several domains (just like your example) and I haven't had any problems/issues.

Google is fine with it and they know how to handle 301s. Yahoo! and MSN don't know how to deal with them, although Yahoo! claims to have it all figured out.