[RESOLVED] Parking multiple domains and SEO

[FrankTheTank]

I have a client who wants to purchase multiple domains and park them all so they all lead to her existing site. These are not URLs a user is likely to ever enter into an address bar manually - she thinks that if people search for these words in Google, her parked domain will come up as a result because the words are in the domain name. Then the user is directed to her site.

I know that Google says this about duplicate content (emphasis mine):
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Is this the kind of behavior they are talking about? I don't think her tactic is a smart one, but I'd like to be able to explain to her why it's a bad idea.

Thanks,
Frank

[LeeU]

I believe the domains would need to forward to her permanent domain; otherwise that would look like duplicate content.

[FrankTheTank]

They would all be forwarding - I suppose google is smart enough to figure out that people forward domains and it's not duplicate sites.

So the remaining question is, do the words/text in the domain names do anything for your search engine results? For instance, if I had the domain name FranktheTank.com, would that help my search results for "Frank" and "Tank" (assuming that those words already appeared in my site)?

Thanks,
Frank

[felgall]

It would be one extra reference to the keyowrds compared to if it were a different domain name.

The two main reasons I can think of for obtaining and redirecting alternate domains are:
1. to pick up the traffic from those people who might type in the domain name directly because it seems an obvious name to have associated with what they are looking for.
2. to stop a competitor getting the domain to set up a competing site.

[FrankTheTank]

So if we are not worried about competitors, and the URLs are long and quite unlikely... This is a waste of trouble and money?

[LeeU]

According to this thread (http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/34bb0276ac52adb2/e48c7c7b38db6225?q=domain+names#e48c7c7b38db6225), yes, it would be.

[FrankTheTank]

Excellent. Thanks LeeU and felgall.

Frank

[WebJoel]

.... to pick up the traffic from those people who might type in the domain name directly because it seems an obvious name to have associated with what they are looking for....
Curious this. Similarity:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/26/india.harry.potter.ap/index.html

[FrankTheTank]

Hollywood will fight to protect their young from any percieved threats... and by
"young," I mean money.