Is a masked url re-direct hurting our rankings

Is a masked url re-direct hurting our rankings - If a page has internal and external outgoing links to redirecting URLs, it’s returning 3xx (301, 302, etc.) HTTP status codes standing for redirection. This issue means that the page does not exist on a permanent or temporary basis. It appears on most of the popular web browsers, usually caused by a misconfigured website. However, there are some steps you can take to ensure the issue isn’t on your side. You can find more details about redirecting URLs by reading the Google Search Central overview. In this article, we’ll go over how you can fix the Is a masked url re-direct hurting our rankings error on your web browser. Problem :

I would like to know if a domain which we purchased and is re-directed to our main site is hurting seo. The forwarded url is being masked (and there is no way to turn this off).

So say our main site is www.badges-and-buttons.com we then purchased www.badges-buttons.com

Anyone typing www.badges-buttons.com into the address bar is forwarded to the www.badges-and-buttons.com main site but the url in the address bar stays www.badges-buttons.com

I am thinking that google may see this as duplicate content? Any advice?

Solution :

Google punishments

If both sites are the same and both sites are in the index then yes, one will be marked as duplicate. Do a site: www.example.com` as a search on Google.
Generally what normally happens is when a site is marked duplicate it will noted by Google and if enough pages and content gets marked as duplicate the site will receive a punishment resulting in lower rankings. However this is normally only received by the copy-cat and not the master site.

Possible solution using no-index or redirect

Its doubtful that a website that copies content from one domain to another (Masked effect) will ever receive good enough rankings to get good traffic. A safer option would be to use no-index or redirect users from that domain to the actual master.

It won't harm your website. Make proper 301 redirection of your old domain.

e.g.

www.badges-and-buttons.com

301 redirect to

www.badges-buttons.com

Also, read this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8450573/how-to-301-redirect-an-entire-domain-while-preserving-the-path

We hope that this article has helped you resolve the seo, redirects, url error in your web browsers. Enjoy browsing the internet uninterrupted!