Question about multiple-site hosting accounts

I've been reading really good reviews about Hostgator and have genuine interest on registering a "baby" account.
As I'm a newcomer on web publishing, I have a question about the multiple sites hosting accounts.
I'm not really sure how to ask, besides my english is not so good, so I hope you guys to understand me.
I've been adviced to be carefull about multiple sites hosting accounts, because the main site will be the genuine for the search engines spiders, and the addons are going to work by redirections (DNS sharing?) in many cases, probably bringing some problems in some applications.
So I would really like to have some words on this either from Hostgator stuff or from some users.

Thanks a lot, and I apologize if the question looks kind of silly.

[MachineDog]

No, no. The add-on domains are not done by redirection. The DNS server just tells it the domain is /home/username/public_html/whateversubdirectoryforadd-on/ and that directory WILL show up as www.whateveradd-ondomain.com. The baby account should do well for most people. BTW, any host who does add-on domains by redirections just shouldn't be a host. lol

[Serra]

Originally Posted by MachineDog

No, no. The add-on domains are not done by redirection.

CAREFUL! Some add-ons ARE done by redirection as well as some parked domains and that will totally screw any chance of getting into Google.

I had a client that had that exact problem, their add-on domain ended up being redirected by their domain reg company and I ended up moving it to goDaddy to avoid the problem. Their reg company had no way to directly assign it to a hosting account. (Stupid, stupid, stupid). I actually tried every setting they had and NONE of them worked correctly for an add-on domain.

Once I moved hosting here and moved the reg to goDaddy, no more redirect problems and it was listed in Google in a two weeks.

I'm happy to report that both add-on and parked domains work fine here.

Just remember that Google tracks the number of domains that point to a specific site, I would not exceed 5 domains pointed to one account. Google has in the past raised and lowered their cutoff level, so 5 is fairly safe, 10 might be a problem, 100 is a problem.

[MachineDog]

That's just a bad domain registrar then.

Well, it shouldn't be a problem, as I have my domain registered at godaddy.
I just wanted to know if addons domains are going to be seen the same way a main domain is being seen.
So, thanks a lot for the answers.

[Darth Unrivaled]

Originally Posted by MachineDog

No, no. The add-on domains are not done by redirection. The DNS server just tells it the domain is /home/username/public_html/whateversubdirectoryforadd-on/ and that directory WILL show up as www.whateveradd-ondomain.com. The baby account should do well for most people. BTW, any host who does add-on domains by redirections just shouldn't be a host. lol

One Reason why I came to hostGator my old host used redirections and it cost me to add for every 5 I wanted.

[JohnBoy]

Hi,

A problem I have with an add on domain is that i can't verify a Google sitemap.

My main domain is verified fine, but it will not work on an add on domain, if I place the verification page and sitemap in the add on domains folder.

If I want to have a handfull of domains hosted, do i need to go up to Reseller status to give each domain it's own account and thus root??

Any help gratefully recieved, i'm loving my Hostgator account, and hope i can keep things as they are. I don't want to sell hosting, just want my own sites hosted (and SEO'd ) well.

Cheers,

John