All entries for Monday 10 December 2007

Domain name redirects or masking?

Writing about web page http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=4367

One of the problems that the search engines have to solve is to work out which version of a page is most representative. The CCM home page can end in four ways but always displays the same content.

• .co.uk/
• .co.uk/default.aspx
• .co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx
• .co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1

The CCM team often hosts web content for our members. Initially all of these used masking because this was the only option using the domain registrant FreeParking but after moving to Telivo we have the choice. Masking means that the visitor appears to be on the redirected domain even when navigating within the host site. With masking the search engines can just treat this as the redirection page with its title and description.

Most search engines prefer a 301 redirect that makes clear which is the main page.

I have been creating ‘mini sites’ using CCM catalogue pages and a cluster page as an index. These can easily be associated to the companies site with an additional domain such as www.unilight-lighting.co.uk which redirects with masking to the CCM page, above.
This will cause problems with the search engines but is less confusing to the user who navigates there from e-newsletters etc.

The masking will have some negative impact but this can be reduced if you treat the underlying CCM page as the main page for search. The strong internal links from the rest of the CCM site helps with this.
Where the different domains are similar or related such as .com and .co.uk then non-masked redirection should be used.

Robert McGonigle : 10 Dec 2007 14:53 |  Tags: Cannonicalization Domain Redirection Masked Redirection |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem