Does having extra domain names help postion in search engine

[noel123]

Some sellers claim that it helps a site in the search engines to have a number of domain names.
Does one have to point them to the original site and does one need to mask them??
I wonder about this because often you see when submitting to a search engine where they warn of submitting mirror sites. Any comments please? Thank you all. Ryan.

[minstrel]

If you have several different websites with significantly different content, it may help the ranking of a particular site, at least under certain circumstances.

Two or more sites with identical (duplicate) content will not help at all.

"Parked" domain names with no content pointing to your website will not help your ranking at all: All that will do is prevent someone else from buying a competitive domain name.

[jawn_tech]

Minstrel is right. No ranking benefit whatsoever. The extra domains being forwarded to and masking the site will only get socked for duplicate content, because that's how the SE's will see them. Therefore, the extra domains won't get indexed at all.

If however, the domains already somehow had aquired in-bound-links (ibl's), you might want to take advantage of any passage of PR by setting up a 301 redirect. (let me know if you need help with that, it's really easy).

No other benefit I can think of, other than the benefit that comes with cybersquatting (to use an old-school term, lol). Don't worry, I have more domains than I know what to do with...

While I'm at it, a suggestion might be that if you wanted to use the domains as 'associated' sites, you could perhaps forward them to subdomains, as SE's apparently see subdomains as a separate site. I've never heard yet of anyone getting penalized for that. Otherwise, use them for separate sites, sell them, or hold 'em.

[noel123]

Thanks people for your comments and advice. I am in australia and have a .com.au site and a .com site. Both identical content and the search engines seem to have them both listed seperately. Is it ok to submit both to the SE's? The other domains I have I have them all pointing to my .com site

[minstrel]

Don't submit them at all. For one thing, they've already both been found by SEs, from what you posted.

[paulhiles]

I have a competitor who has purchased over 400 domain names. Every so often I see a new one pop up as a one page, sometimes a 4 page website. The content is simply bland copy with no serious intent to act as a functioning website.

The sole purpose of these sites is to deliver an inbound link (usually in the page footer) to his two core websites. Makes my blood boil.. but so far he's getting away with it!

Paul

[voasi]

If the sites are unique (at least 80%) from each other AND are on different C Block IP Classes then this can really benefit the owner of the sites. These will count has unique sites linking. Yahoo! in particular doesn't like linking between sites you own within your same C class IP address.

Originally Posted by paulhiles

The sole purpose of these sites is to deliver an inbound link (usually in the page footer) to his two core websites. Makes my blood boil.. but so far he's getting away with it!

For now. Give it time and his whole network of 400+ will get wiped out. I've seen it happen on many occasions and suprised people are still doing it.

[noel123]

Thanks everyone for your comments. I will leave as is then. I have a few domains all pointing to my dot com site and they were only purchased to cover my back as the saying goes. Some search engines in Australia will only accept .com.au sites so on those I actually submitted my.com.au site. However after reading posts as I see it, the feeling seems to be amongst the majority that is is not necessary to submit to S/E's at all? Interesting eh? Thanks everyone.