Effect of mutiple domains and 1 IP on google ?

[dolphan39]

Hi,

Newbie here....

We have loads of domain registered that all go to the IP address for http://www.hyperion.com. These domains include international ones such as for Germany http://www.hyperion.de/. This URL redirects you to http://www.hyperion.de/dach/ . I was wondering if the redirect is the main reason we do not show up on German Google, i.e. http://www.google.de/search?biw=1004&hl=de&q=hyperion&meta=cr%3DcountryDE ?

I can change my code so http://www.hyperion.de/ displays the German homepage on hyperion.com as http://www.hyperion.de/ easily, but I am not sure it would help.

TIA,
Dave

[ShooflyPie]

First of all, make sure you're using the right kind of redirect. If you want Google to follow the redirect then you must use a 301 server code. No 302s, no JavaScript, no META redirects.

[dolphan39]

First of all, make sure you're using the right kind of redirect. If you want Google to follow the redirect then you must use a 301 server code. No 302s, no JavaScript, no META redirects. hate to sound dumb, but I am using ColdFusion and we use CFLOCATION to do the redirects - if that means anything to you

Thanks

[martinuboo]

hate to sound dumb, but I am using ColdFusion and we use CFLOCATION to do the redirects - if that means anything to you

ThanksThat would be a 302:
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Server: Netscape-Enterprise/4.1
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:42:14 GMT
Location: /dach
Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8Connection: close
Tool = Server Header Checker (http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php)

martin

[dolphan39]

Tool = Server Header Checker (http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php)
martin

thanks for that site :D

it tells me the techniqiue I am recommending and use for http://www.businessperformancemanagement.de/ works:

HTTP/1.1 200 OKServer: Netscape-Enterprise/4.1Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:49:01 GMTContent-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8Connection: close

but the one for http://www.hyperion.de we currently use everywere else, does not:
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved TemporarilyServer: Netscape-Enterprise/4.1Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:51:10 GMTLocation: /dachContent-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8Connection: close

[ShooflyPie]

I'm not sure I follow what you're doing with the redirects and domain names now. What's the purpose of all the domain names? If it's just to make sure that users are always able to find you, then good. But don't keep them because you think you're getting some benefit in search engines--you're not.

As Martinuboo pointed out, you're using a 302 redirect. That tells search engines that your website has only been Temporarily Redirected. You need to find out how to send out the 301 (Permanently Redirected) code. And make sure that, however many redirects you have, they all end up at the same domain name. That is, don't mirror your content on other domain names. It doesn't matter if the final result is http://www.hyperion.de/dach/, as long as you're consistent.

[dolphan39]

The only domains I really care about the search engines finding are the one for the various Hyperion country sites, i.e. http://www.hyperion.fr/. That current reports a 302. I will change my code to do a server-side redirect. That appears to the browser or crawler as if you were not redirected at all.

The other domains I am not interested in and I was not involved in why purchased them.

I find this "stuff" I real mixture of Marketing work and IT work and I only am interested in the latter.

Thanks so much for the help. It has been invaluable.

[ShooflyPie]

I will change my code to do a server-side redirect. That appears to the browser or crawler as if you were not redirected at all.

Not sure what you mean by that; there is no such thing as a redirect that a browser or crawler can't detect. In order to get a crawler or browser to request a new HTML document, you need to tell the browser or crawler where it is--otherwise what you're talking about is not a redirect, it's something else.

Remember, there's absolutely nothing wrong with using redirects. Nothing--as long as you send the 301 HTTP header (not 200, not 302, etc).

[dolphan39]

Remember, there's absolutely nothing wrong with using redirects. Nothing--as long as you send the 301 HTTP header (not 200, not 302, etc).
whoops :confused: what's wrong with 200 ? Isnt that just no redirect ?

[Jeff Martin]

whoops what's wrong with 200 ? Isnt that just no redirect ?

The problem is, if you use a redirect and send an HTTP response code of 200, you are telling the requestor "OK, you found what your looking for - no problems".

You need a 301 response code to let the search engines know that all requests, and those in the future, go to the specified IP/URL. This also means all links to those redirected domains will get credited to the domain you are forwarding to.

[dolphan39]

Maybe I should start over:

I want our homepages for all language/country versions of our site to go to same IP address and same relative path, i.e.

http://www.hyperion.de/
http://www.hyperion.com/
http://www.hyperion.fr/

however, on the back-end they are all on the same server and the non-US homepage are housed under folders, such as /fr, /dach, etc.

The server can redirect the request so that all 3 URLs above return the homepage from the correct country, i.e. return a status of 200.

Is that OK ?

Thanks

[Jeff Martin]

Not if they are each independant sites on your web server.

It doesnt matter that they are on the same server. Since each is configured as a seperate site on your webserver each needs a 301 redirect. How about you simply keep your server redirects in place but just modify each of them to send a 301 HTTP response header?

[dolphan39]

sorry for the poor explanation, they are not separate sites on the server, they are the same site trying use domains to make them appear as local versions:

http://www.hyperion.de/ = http://www.hyperion.com/dach/ = http://www.hyperion.de/dach/

http://www.hyperion.com/ ( main / US site )

http://www.hyperion.fr/ = http://www.hyperion.fr/fr/ = http://www.hyperion.com/fr/

I am not sure in ColdFusion how to perform a 301 redirect, but that is likely a question for Macromedia.

Thanks for all the help.

[Jeff Martin]

Here (http://web-sniffer.net/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hyperion.de&submit=Submit&http=1.1&gzip=yes&type=GET&ua=Mozilla%2F4.0+%28compatible%3B+MSIE+6.0%3B+Wind ows+NT+5.1%3B+SV1%3B+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322%29+Web-Sniffer%2F1.0.20) is what one of my favorite web tools has to show me about a request for the .de site.

A request for the .de domain is beign forwarded (302 - temporary) to the /dach folder. It doesnt matter that this is pointing to a folder and not another physical site. If the Netscape-Enterprise server your using has no option to set a redirect code (MS IIS does) then you can use cold fusion to perform the redirect (if your not already doing so) and use any HTTP response header you want.

Im not a cold fusion person, I deal with ASP, if this can be done is ASP (and I have done it) then I know it canbe done in cold fusion.

[dolphan39]

My intent was to change http://www.hyperion.de/ to act exactly like http://www.businessperformancemanagement.de/ . The hope is that google.de would crawl http://www.hyperion.de/ without seeing any redirects and be happy.


thanks for the great site:
http://web-sniffer.net/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessperformancemanagemen t.de%2F&submit=Submit&http=1.1&gzip=yes&type=GET&ua=Mozilla%2F4.0+%28compatible%3B+MSIE+6.0%3B+Wind ows+NT+5.1%3B+SV1%3B+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322%29+Web-Sniffer%2F1.0.20

[Jeff Martin]

You definately need a redirect here. Right now there are two sites with identical content...never a good situation to be in as far as the SEs are concerned. You need to pick one to be the main domain and 301 redirect to that main domain...you want the search engines to see the redirect.

[AussieWebmaster]

You have the right idea.... use a subdirectory for each language and then redirect the country domain to that subdirectory index page.... but you should change the links at the top to the right language and leave only links that tell people they can transfer within the site to other languages.

You then want to work the title tags - even the English ones - to reflect your main keywords on the various pages... homepage or country index page should be the top three keywords in that language and the other pages the keywords for the content they cover.

You then can submit the language index pages to individual categories in DMOZ specific to the language as well as other language specific directories etc.

Never use the company name and wlecome etc. in your title tag... you may as well leave it as homepage or untitled....

[dolphan39]

our intent is to localize our website within the next 6 months so that the navigation and URLs for all the pages would be the same for all languages and each page request would send back the page in the local language. For now, we have the "lame" english header on the int'l pages. :o