Question

There is a new domain, let’s say va.in.

Content is being prepared for the sub-domain a.va.in

The idea is that va.in/index could contain pointers to various sections sometime in future (e.g. b.va.in, c.va.in etc.). As of now, it does not make sense to have such a page as there is just one section i.e. a.va.in

1. If I decide to re-direct va.in to a.va.in for now, will the search engines follow the re-direct and index the site?

2. Is DNS the best place to do the re-direction?

Answer 1

Using ‘301 Moved Permanently’ search engine will only index sub-domain a.va.in. If that’s ok, you can do this using web server’s config.

For example in Apache:

<VirtualHost va.in www.va.in> Redirect permanent / http://a.va.in/ </VirtualHost> 

---

You can’t really use DNS to do redirect, because in DNS you cannot assign CNAME to @. See: Is Root domain CNAME to other domain allowed by DNS RFC?

There is question related to yours: 301 Redirect vs DNS change: Is it ever safe to kill a 301 redirect and update the DNS for a subdomain?