Multiple domain names

[ADS(o)(o)]

Up until now we have about 20 domain names registered to protect our business name from being hijacked. I set up websites for most of the domains or done a redirect to the main domain through IIS on our webservers. The look and feel of each websites index page is pretty similar for anyone dropping in and looking but index content, text, title, meta etc would be different to target our business main keywords. The shopping carts on each site is a clone of the main site with just different configurations to send orders to the respective email addresses for each site. My idea was, well if customers don't see the main site maybe they will see or stumble on another company website as they search the net for relevant keywords
I am reading more and more we may get penalised for duplicate content is this true and is what I am doing considered duplicate content?

Any help greatly appreciated

[cbp]

Welcome to WPW.

Would you get penalised? Why would the search engine want multiple copies of the same site in their index?

Why not set up a 301 redirect of them all to one site?, which is what Google recommend.

If you are going to have multiple site for the company each targetting a differnt keyword, then generally you won't succeed ---- that multile sets of backlinks for eac site you need etc etc --- why not put all the effort into one site.

Their have been lots of threads on this eg:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=32510
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=37759
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=32911
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=39877
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=9371
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=24228

CBP

[ADS(o)(o)]

Thanks for the reply and the links, 301s appear to be the way to go, boy is this gonna make my life a breeze, one site to concentrate on instead of lots.
Just to be sure I do this correct on our server (windows) go into IIS for each website on the home directory tab and select redirect to a url, enter main domain name and check a permanent redirect for this resource - JOB DONE, is this correct, nothing else needs done?

[adbart]

Yep, that's it.