2 domain, 1 website, will spider know?

Hi Guys, i have a problem and i hope any of you guys can help. i will be grateful.

I am from singapore and i have register a domain and a webhost. My website is half way to finish. The problem is my current domain name is a ".com" but now i need to change it to ".com.sg". To have a .sg is very important for me and it is mosy certainly that most people will search my type of business in the Yahoo Singapore search engine.

My webhost suggest that i buy a new domain with the .sg and can point my current domain and the new domain to my one single website. Personally, i want to change it to .sg rather than getting a new one. Is that possible?

If that is not possible and i will have to follow what the webhost had advised me. Will the search engine be able to spider my website with two domain, the ".com" and ".com.sg" domain? will the spidering be successful and effectively? If not, then is there any way to go around it?

Will be grateful if anyone can help as this business is very imporatnt to me. Thank you very much.

Tony
God Bless You.

We don't have a search engine and can't speak for others. In the ODP directory, you would have to submit an Update URL request and wait for an editor to process it. It should be clearly noted on the old domain itself that the new URL is different, maybe even redirecting you there automatically.

In my opinion, the best way would be somewhat in the middle between your idea and your hosts idea: Make the old domain return an error code and redirect to the new one. So you don't loose visitors who have bookmarked the old adress and traffic from directories that have not yyet updated. In some time (if you have access to the logs you can see when the traffic on the old domain goes down) you can abandon the old one and live happy with the new.

If I understand the question correctly, there is nothing that we can answer.

(1) Don't submit your site to the ODP till it's had TWO full halves' worth of finishment. So whatever you do before you finish is of no interest to us.

(2) We have nothing to do, and know nothing about Yahoo. You pay them, they give you service; you don't like their service, you call their customer support number. We don't and can't get in the middle.

(3) We have very little to do with domain name registrations. You may register as many domains as you want, and point them to whatever websites you want. Just ... when you finish your site, pick ONE ONLY to submit to the ODP. Submitting multiple domain names is spamming, and can keep you from being listed at all. But OWNING multiple domain names is none of our business.

(3) There is no such thing as "changing" a domain name. You either own one or you don't. If you own it, you can sell or abandon it. Buying a different domain name is a separate and independent transaction.

(4) But: if you abandon a domain name, you will certainly lose all the benefit from all the links from all other websites that point to the old domain name. Some very well-run directories (likd the ODP) will try to update their links to point to the new domain. Most directories, and most other websites, aren't so well-run.

Which comes down to something that we can actually answer: Yes, you should definitely keep the old name, and either point it to the same website as the new name, or configure it to return a "permanent redirection" status code (HTTP error code 301. This should mean something to your techies. If it doesn't, shoot them and go look for a competant techie.)

That last has little to do with the ODP, but it is standard webmaster prudence. And it makes no difference to US which choice you make. Just -- don't submit a redirecting domain name to us: use a domain name that resolves directly to the site.