Can the blog subdomain take precedence over my own domain in search engines?

Question

Suppose I create a blog with SomeName in blogger.com or tumblr.com. So the address is SomeName.blogger.com or SomeName.tumblr.com. I need some clarification as to the situation when I want to use MyOwnDomain.com for the blog:

1. If I simply go to the control panel of my domain registrar and setup MyOwnDomain.com to redirect to SomeName.blogger.com, then I shall expect that the blog will show up in search results as "SomeName.blogger.com"?

2. If I add MyOwnDomain.com in blogger control panel and edit the A and CNAME records of MyOwnDomain.com with the information provided in blogger, then the blog will show up in search results as MyOwnDomain.com? Is this guaranteed?

Are there any other SEO dangers to using Blogger or Tumblr when you want to promote your own domain?

Answer 1

1. Yes.

2. Yes. Yes. You ask about tumblr.com and the answer is yes for them too. They give detailed instructions, but say:

Our staff isn't able to support many of the issues that may crop up when setting up a domain name.

(It should be "our staff aren't", but I can't fix that!)

The SEO dangers associated with using Blogger and Tumblr with your own domain aren't about the fact that the site is hosted by them, but more around the difficulty of customising the site for good SEO practise, as you don't have full control over the HTML as you would with your own site.