Penalty for many domains pointing to the same URL?

[tncomseo]

I've searched around on the Google forums, and other sources (including the Q&A!), but haven't seen a solid answer on this one.

I've recently discovered that throughout the years we've had several hundred domains pointed to our homepage. These are our domains and are related to our niche. I believe they were pointed for the purposes of attracting type-in traffic.

Before last month I knew at least some existed, but I didn't realize the extent until last week.

I know there isn't any positive SEO effect to doing this (except perhaps if any of the domains have links to them, and a few do), but is there any negative SEO effect?  I realize that there are legitimate redirects for type-in traffic, like misspellings and such, but most of these are just exact-match-domains. It just screams unnatural to me, but perhaps I'm just a little paranoid.

[KyleChamp]

You can get penalized for this if these domains are created for the purpose of getting extra exposer on the internet for the domain they are all pointing to.

[JasonLancaster]

I see no possibility of a penalty as it sounds like these domains were purchased just to grab type-in traffic, protect the product and brand, etc. This is natural and logical behavior.

Unless you're actively building links to one or more of these redirected domains (something that spammers do), I think you can sleep easy.

If you want to be extra careful, you could monitor backlinks to all the domains you've got redirected and make sure that no one is linking to them...but if your site already has a good link profile and trust with Google, I'd say who cares.

[GIGS20]

Just like Kyle said, you could be hurting your website's Google rankings with these 301 redirects. You will also have a bigger chance of being penalized if some of your URLs have some identical content. Your question also pops up in another SEOMoz question:  http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-penalties-be-passed-via-301-redirect

[brandonjschwartz]

If they're just domain names, it doesn't matter one way or the other. If the domain names have penalties, then sure there'd be a risk of passing a penalty on with the redirect.

I worked on a project once where the customer had purchased several hundred domain names. Some were microsites that had little value but a couple of links, some had mask redirects to their main site, others were just empty. I created individual pages on their main website to reflect the microsite content, then redirected the microsite domains there. I 301 redirected every masked and every floating domain name they owned just in case there was type in traffic.

The consolidation was done alongside other SEO efforts and the site in question has been consistently near the top of the SERP's for their target market. You have to look at your motives for doing something... if you're not working to be manipulative and have legitimate business reasons for doing something, then chances are it's ok. A lot of SEO is just about common sense.

[tncomseo]

It seems like the answer isn't so much the quantity of domains, but how each individual domain is used.  So I think what I'll do is look out for any domains with a bad link profile, but leave the rest for type-in traffic.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

It's probably natural, as lots of sites have and continue to do this. The problem comes when lots of domains are 301 directed all at once, or there are spammy link pointed to the 301 domains.

In the old days, misspellings and exact match parked domains got a fair amount of traffic, so this practice was much more common than it is today. Now, Google is much more sophisticated and these types of domains don't pack much of a punch.

On the flip side, you're probably gaining little or no SEO benefit from this either. If you are concerned about it, you might test stopping the redirection for 30 days and see what happens, or change the 301's into 302's, which don't pass PageRank and are therefor considered a little safer in shady situations.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!