: Is a masked url re-direct hurting our rankings 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

@Nimeshi995

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

e.g.
badges-and-buttons.com
301 redirect to
badges-buttons.com
Also, read this stackoverflow.com/questions/8450573/how-to-301-redirect-an-entire-domain-while-preserving-the-path

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@Nimeshi995

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: 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.

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