Recently the concept of IP funnelling has reached website masters. IP funnelling is a process you can use in order to stop duplicate content from being indexed. Basically you can point any extra domains you have to a feeder site. The feeder site will then forward any links to the main site to help you boost search results.

There are many problems with this concept though. It will work like an “off domain doorway” which does not benefit the user. Typically the tag will create a “red flag” which could get you a penalty in Google and other search engines. The tag is almost impossible to find by the visitor to your site as well. It does give optimised content to the spider. The visitor can click on the feeder site and get redirected to your site with a 301 redirect, but there is no real search engine optimisation benefit to the IP funnelling option.

It will help in the duplicate content issue though. Since you have the 301 redirect with no content the visitor and search engine are treated the same and will be sent to the main site. They trouble is that if it is not worth anything you have done a lot of extra work for a possible penalty. It is better to stay clear of IP funnelling and work on your natural methods for links, websites, and search rankings. You will benefit more from taking the high road than you will for trying to confuse the search bot regarding sites.