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Since google seems to have a ton of mysterious rules that can hurt your ranking, I was wondering if having multiple domains for a website can lead to some problem.

I don't plan on submitting them to the search engines nor I want to promote them. I registered them to prevent someone else steal my brand and my business.

Will google have an issue with that?

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2 Answers

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Multiple domains will hurt you ranking if there are these two conditions:

  1. Each domain duplicates the main site and you can browse all its pages from the duplicate domains
  2. Google indexed these domains

Prevention is better.

We assume that your main site is available at www.youbusiness.com and you buy the same domain name with other extensions (.eu , .fr …). You need to be sure that Google does not index these domains.

I suggest you three solutions that have different effects but are good for the scope:

  • Insert this rule in the robots.txt file only of the multiple domains:

    User-agent: *

    Disallow: /

  • Apply an permanent redirect from the multiple domains to the main site, the request www.youbusiness.fr (or other) will be redirected to the .COM domain

  • Create a landing page to be published in the multiple domains
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Rinzi suggested you the right solution.

There is also another way. You could use different domain to boost your ranking. You could use a domain for a company blog, or different extension for local sites (for example www.yourbusiness.it in italian, www.yourbusiness.fr in french, etc..), or to promote a single product or business unit. In this way you could create a network of site that could affect the ranking of the main site.

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