Member Avatar for JRM

I think I read and/or played a google video about cname redirects and their effect on rank. The takeaway that I got was that using a cname that redirects to the main site was OK as long as the site content was consistent with the cname.

Has anyone tried this with good result? Did you need to register the cname as another site?

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Short answer for : a DNS alias (CNAME) only maps one hostname to another at the DNS level — it is not an HTTP redirect and doesn’t by itself tell search engines which hostname you want indexed. To consolidate indexing and ranking signals, explicitly indicate the canonical hostname (preferably with server-side 301 redirects; rel="canonical" is a fallback). See Google’s guidance on consolidating duplicate URLs for details: Consolidate duplicate URLs.

Practical checklist before you touch DNS or hosting:

  • Pick one canonical hostname (with protocol, e.g., https://www.example.com).
  • Configure the alias host to respond with a permanent 301 to the canonical hostname. DNS changes alone will not do this.
  • Make sure TLS certs cover any hostname that will be served over HTTPS (certificate mismatch prevents the redirect from succeeding in browsers and for crawlers).
  • If you cannot do 301 redirects, add rel="canonical" on every aliased page pointing to the canonical URL — monitor closely because this can be less reliable than redirects.
  • Add and verify both hostnames in Google Search Console to track coverage and indexation during the change; verification is for monitoring and troubleshooting, not a substitute for proper redirects.

Clarifying ’s point: you will need access to DNS and webserver (or CDN) configuration to implement redirects, certs, and correct host-header handling. Avoid meta-refresh or JavaScript redirects for this purpose; use server-side 301 wherever possible.

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Either CNAME or A-record is fine but you friend will need access to the dns records of the domain to be able to make any either change.

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