Displaying Vanity URL in Google Search Result

[Lauriedechaseaux]

Hi Moz!

Not sure if this has been asked before, but is there any way to tell Google to display a vanity URL (that has been 301d) instead of the actual URL in the SERP?

Example: www.domainA.com is a vanity URL (bought specifically for Brand Identity reasons) that redirects to www.domainB.com. Is it possible to have the domainA Url show up in Google for a Branded search query?

Thanks in advance!

Arjun

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Laurie

That's kind of old school cloaking and when you add the 301 you have told Google that the content has moved to the new URL. I can't think why you would want to do this?

For me it's a big SEO no no - even if you have teh same content on two URLs you'd still suffer a drop in rankings due to duplication issues. So you would need to canonicalise, thus losing one of teh URLs.

Regards Nigel

[TucsonAZWebDesign]

Like Nigel said, pretty much the only reason I would ever aim to try and put something in front of my root domain name, would be because I'm trying to pass the domain off as something it's not. So whether that is affiliate links that nobody wants, or a federal prison sentence for taking Kali linux endeavors a little to far, is not for me to know