Will I be penalised for having multiple suffixes?

[Abyss]

Hi Guys. I have just registered my site and also want to buy my domain in other suffixes (.com, .net, .biz) to help protect my companies identity and want to point these to my .co.uk site.

My question is will I be penalised for this if they are just pointing to my site (there is no hosting involved) and have not been submitted to any Search Engine.

Also I want to puchase certain mispellings of my domain and do the same thing. Is this OK to do?

Thanks,

[Manu]

Its ok if you do a 301 permanent redirection to your main website. You can also protect these websites by search engine spiders by using robots.txt and redirecting them to your main website using meta refresh tag.

[Andy]

Personally I don't see the point of registering more than one domain name for a site unless you are ebay or yahoo etc. If your site is a UK site then all you need is a .co.uk If other people register the other names then let them help establish your brand identity free of charge since you got there first, you can sue them later if they try and copy your business model.

Ideally you own a .com also for the dumbos who don't know other domain extensions exist. But if your name is taken like it probably is then that is not a consideration you have to bother with.

So yes you will be penalised in the form of domain hosting fees.

[Menard]

Frankly, I would go with the .com as my main suffix and point the .co.uk to it.

Is your business that big to warrant such a yearly investment?

These are the domain prices, in USD, which my registrar charges:

biz  $8.88/yr 
bz  $28.88/yr 
ca  $15.95/yr 
cc  $28.88/yr 
cn  $28.88/yr 
co.uk  $8.88/yr 
com  $8.88/yr 
com.cn  $28.88/yr 
de  $17.88/yr 
eu  $11.44/yr 
in  $21.00/yr 
info  $2.98/yr 
mobi  $22.48/yr 
net  $8.88/yr 
net.cn  $28.88/yr 
nu  $28.88/yr 
org  $8.88/yr 
org.cn  $28.88/yr 
org.uk  $8.88/yr 
tv  $42.95/yr 
us  $8.88/yr 
ws  $28.88/yr 


With registered misspellings (and misspelling does have two s's and is one of the most commonly misspelled words, ironically) that could run into hundreds per year to keep up those domains.

If you have a unique brand name which you feel can only be associated with your business, then by all means trademark it. If someone comes along and uses your trademarked name in their domain, then you can offer to sue them if they don't remove it. Microsoft will do this regularly; even if it is a name like ihatemicrosoft, being that it contains Microsoft in the name, it is asking for a lawsuit (of course, they have the power to backup threats).

Of course, everything being said, if you really want to do it, go ahead and do it; there are other sites which have done the same thing and manu has provided the details you need to do it. If you have the resources to do that, and to get good promotion for your site, uh...we would all be very appreciative if you would place a link to our sites on your's.

[Gracia]

Or better said, point all your domains to the same site with 301 redirects. This tells the search engines that all the other domains are the same site. This is the only proper way to do handle multiple domains.

It also helps users that type the typo to go to the right domain, you dont want them to keep going to the typo domain, you want them to come to the right domain.