Quote:
Originally Posted by blitzen
Hi,
There is one particular company that has several domains with the same products, same description, same pricing, same everything!
And, when I do a search, some of these duplicate websites are on the first page. There is even a link on the first SERP to another page that lists this company's websites.
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Do you consider search engines should ban affiliate websites or sites selling the same product?
Sometimes cloning content is legal and also a recommended standard for certain types of internet websites. The perfect search engine should act as a human internet surfer, accept this and find a way to deal with it.
There are multiple software download sites selling the same software packages with the same descriptions and prices due to PADs:
Portable Application Description (PAD) - Association of Shareware Professionals
This is a standard XML file with product description and any developer can build one and submit it to thousands of software download sites that will publish the content.
Also, another example from the dating industry, people can register profiles on multiple dating/social networking websites. These website could also be banned for having common users that posted same descriptions and details?
The 3rd and most clone-like example is that of affiliate sites. There are websites with affiliate programs that allow their affiliates to build sites with their content or even run clones of their entire site.
Let's assume search engines decide for a 100% unique content filter. Searching for a affiliate product will show 1 store with that title and description and the rest of results will be discussions about it if any. Maybe the searcher is just looking for a store close to home and is not interested in unique content or wants to find a fast website as he needs to download the product.
Another thing, how can the search engine decide which site to show and what sites to throw out of business? The only ethical thing to do would be to ban all but would that be in the interest of users searching for that special content?
Replacing good clone results with worse results just because those are different doesn't make sense in all situations.
Search engines should have an option for users that want to see unique results or one for users that just want to see a list with all sites containing what they are looking for.