What impact would DNS masking have on search engine rankings? I've always been told it's a problem, but I'm not 100% on the technical ins and outs.

Hmm. Domain masking is something that, like you said.. everyone will tell you is really bad for SEO. But the reasons why and how are never really explained.

This is what I know:

Google sees two domains with the same content - which CAN give you duplicat content penalties. The reason being is that you are not removing the original domain, and someone could still get to your content via the original domain, and the content is also available under the new domain, which then leads to duplication of content in google's eyes.

There are a few other things that do effect SEO like where the domain is pointing to, but I do not want to give you wrong information.. Before i go any further, do you mind telling me what type of masking you are using??

Are you pointing a purchased domain name to a free domain?? or just one purchased domain to another domain?? And whats your reason for doing so?

Before I add my piece just a quick explanation of my knowledge. I'm a jack of all trades and a master of one. I am essentialy a photographer / retoucher who has had to branch out to survive. I know a little bit about a lot of things e.g. programming, networking, css, html, seo. I am not an expert!!!

DNS masking is said to be a bad thing because it leads search engines to believe you are producing duplicate content and penalises the site (both sites) accordingly. In what way and to what extent I'm not sure. I am also told google won't index both sites, for example I'm one of those strange English people and when I purchase domains I always buy in pairs (.co.uk and .com). Now when the googlebot hits the site it will index the first one it sees, unfortunately you don't make the choice, the bot does. So I may have gone to great lengths to publicise the .com address and the googlebot may index only the .co.uk

I use an .htaccess file to sort a few issues. The htaccess is a tremedously powerful thing, well worth doing some research on, it resides only in an apache webserver set up as far as I'm aware.

Take this as a real world example:

On launching a new site you decide how you are going to publicise it, you can go the traditional route and use the www. pre-fix, or you can dispense with it entirely (see second link.

If you have brought the full set of domain names maybe .com, .net, hyphenated, regular, you have to choose which one you are going to have on your stationery and do the seo groundwork with.

With a few simple commands written into the htaccess file I am able to send queries for the following all to the same address, click on the links below and see what appears in your browser address bar:

http://www.golfinternationalmag.co.uk
http://golfinternationalmag.co.uk
http://www.golfinternationalmag.com
http://golfinternationalmag.com

This post is now getting rather long and is not intended to go into the intricate details of htaccess set up, theres loads of stuff online that explains it much better than me!

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GuruOrGarbage you are correct. There are many articles out there that have been published by Google that states it is against their rules to use DNS masking and if the algorithm the search engines use determines your site contains duplicate content it will be removed from search engines.

I have recently watched a few YouTube videos produced by Google that spoke upon this very subject and how it is very wise NOT to duplicate content even if it is duplicated from a completely other site. They recommend that if site content will be used it must contact a backline to the original site in which the content was quoted.

So long and short answer try not to do if possible.

Joe Bourque
Above Web Media
http://www.AboveWebMedia.com