URLs pointing to same site

[llamasteve]

hi,

I have a site that needs to be accessible by both .com and .co.uk addresses. Both addresses will point to the same location - so effectively I am creating two duplicate sites.

Will I be penalised by search engines for doing this? And if so what have others done in this situation - it must be pretty common.

thanks for your help

Stephen

[doc816]

Yes the search engines will penalize your website for duplicate content. You can do what I did recently to counter this situation.

Add a .htaccess file in your website's root folder (if there isnt one already) and add the following script for permanent redirect:


RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.co.uk [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.co.uk [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]


The third condition makes sure that anyone typing in http://domain.com (without the www) will also redirect to www.domain.com as search engines will penalize that as well.

[llamasteve]

That's really helpful. Thanks a lot for your time.