Question about domain redirects

[bjalc2011]

One of my clients has an odd domain redirect situation. See if you can get your head round this:

Domain A is set-up as a domain alias of Domain B

Entering domain A or domain B takes you to default.asp on domain B.

The default.asp includes VB script to check the HTTP_HOST variable. It checks whether the main doman name for domain A is present in the HTTP_HOST and if so redirects it to domain A/sub-folder/index.htm. If not present it redirects to domain B/index.htm. In both cases the redirect uses a response.Redirect clause.

I think what is trying to be achieved is to redirect requests to Domain A to a sub-folder of Domain B.

It works but seems extremely convoluted.

Can anyone see problems with this set-up? Will link juice be lost along the redirect paths?

[scanlin]

I don't know VB scripting but you could use a RewriteRule with a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file? You can redirect domain A traffic to a subfolder on domain B and by using 301 you'll pass all the juice. I'm not sure if your VB script response.Redirect is generating a 301 or not. If it is then you're probably not losing any juice.

[CPU]

There may be other issues. Is the content the same on the two sites? Why should Google index both if that is the case? Also any inbound links gained may be split between the two domains.

Seems a little convoluted to me.

[bjalc2011]

Thanks Mike, I didn't create the redirect set-up for this client so I'm not sure why it was done this way. As you say a rewrite rule in the .htaccess file will be my recommendation to the client.

[bjalc2011]

The content is not duplicated but there are certainly separate inbound links to the two domains.

[TellThemEverything]

yes, this is a problem! response.redirect is a 302 - you at a minimum should be using 301.

however, i recommend you get to the bottom of this and find out what the real intent is here. if one of the domains is old and needs to be shut down then redirects can make sense - but it might all be a mistake. Using 302's shows that whoever set it up didn't know too much about what they were doing

[bjalc2011]

Thanks James.

[TellThemEverything]

Just to add to this: here is how you 301 in vbscript:

<%@ Language=VBScript %> <%' Permanent redirection Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://www.domain.com/" Response.End %>