There are many kinds of "Forwards", what I'm trying to figure out is what kind of forward it is.

Is it a server side redirect? can you show me an example of one of those domain names that "Forward".

Forwarding or redirecting or any kind of "FORWARD" from one domain name to another "DOES NOT" do anything and will not make you rank better in search engines.

I don't see a prob in properly redirecting to another domain. There's no duplicate content issue there.

I've seen the strategy work of buying domains that are about to expire, the owners have gone out of business or where the owners have lost interest but still have traffic from links and directory listings. Then you just forward that traffic on to your site.

These are nonmanaged domains that will have diminishing traffic through time, but for the small price of domain registration, you can get a lot of traffic with a lot of carefully-purchased domains. It's a strategy I've seen as useful in other industries.

I am really confused. We have two additional domain names that we have forwarded to our main website at www.maureenmegowan.com . We got the domain names because in certain instances, we felt the domain names were more descriptive than our main website name, and we only use it in advertising. For instance, one of our domain names is www.pvagent.com which we sometimes use when advertising on the palos verdes peninsula exclusively. Do we have a problem having these websites forwarded to our main website?

Bruce,

I have checked your site and here are the results.

When checking the Server Headers of your pvagent.com website here is what we get:

#1 Server Response: http://www.pvagent.com
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:51:13 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) mod_pointer/0.8 PHP/4.3.11
X-Redirected-By: mod_pointer - http://stderr.net/mod_pointer/
Location: http://www.maureenmegowan.com
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Redirect Target: http://www.maureenmegowan.com


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In simple terms this means that you are redirecting your domain to www.maureenmegowan.com but are doing it by a 302 redirect. What you need to do here is do a 301 redirect which means it is a permenant redirect. If you need help please don't hesitate to get in touch with my tech support stuff they will help you out, just tell them you saw my post on agentsonline.net.

I have three other domain names that I have redirected to my main website. If I had to do it over again, I would want to have one of my other domain names as my main site address. Is there any way to do this without loosing the benefits of all the links that I have to my original site?

Agentserver-
I just checked with Godaddy.com which registers my domain name, and they said they have hundreds of customers, some with hundreds of domain names, that redirect with a 302 redirect though a DNS redirect and have not had any problems with Google on this. They said that a 301 redirect would require my setting up separate webhosting accounts for each domain name and some fairly complex coding which would cost me substantially more.
What do you think>
By the way, how do I embed my UTL address to my main webpage in a descriptive title such as "Palos Verdes Real Estate" in my signature?
Thanks

The fact that search engines - particularly Google - have a problem with 302 redirects has been known is SEO circles for a few years now. It is not a theory - it is fact.

Godaddy declared back in 2003 that they were not going to change their system of redirecting and they have maintained that "party line" ever since. The same applies to other domain registrars.

For them to say that other customers do not have a problem with 302 redirects is a smokescreen. 302 redirects have been the kiss of death in my experience and in the experience of everyone else who treats SEO seriously.

I think you should stick with one domain for brand recognition. Build the brand you have don't dilute it.