Google`s definition of mirror sites

[Alshurf]

Hi! I need help with the next problem:

I have two domain names (www.myexample.com & wwww.my-example.com..) points to the same Web site. There is no any diffirence (one site is mirror of other one). But Google defines em as different (each domain has its own ranking and appears in SERPs on its own position) The only difference in pages cashed by Google is rotating banner. Why Google doesn't understand that one site is mirror to other. May be because of banner?

If I make 301 redirect, will google transfer pagerank, everyone say that it will, but I really afraid of loosing links. Will Google transfer links?
And how google will define which of them to ban?


All answers are greatly appreciated...

[ReviewGolf.com]

Count your blessings!

Once Google realizes that it's the same site, they'll ban both of them.

[Peter (IMC)]

Problem?

That´s not a problem but a blessing as reviewgolf said.

Why do you want 2 domains with the same content? There is no benefit in that. Lose one domain and continue with the other.

The 301 redirect is the way to go. Then simply try to contact webmasters that link to the redirected domain and ask them to change the link. Of course you will lose some backlinks, but in total you will win. Leave the 301 redirect up untill you´re confident that the site can continue on its own. (that could take as long as a year.)

[greeneagle]

Why not use the other URI to place different content and link each to the other? It's really not too hard to copywrite differently for 2 different Sites, is it?

There is really nothing "Black Hat" about appealing to different audiences or age groups through different lingo and communications with enough differentiation is there? Why waste it?

Ken

[sparkyfire]

Why do you want 2 domains with the same content? There is no benefit in that. Lose one domain and continue with the other.

What this doesn't make sence? Why not have 2 domains with the same content. Why not have one at .com, .net, .org, .biz, .tv ..... The more of thies you take, the more that others cant take it, and thus leave little confusion to who you are. Also, if your doing this for 1 company, why have seperate web sites that you have to update rather then just 1. There are many valid cases where having 2 domain names for 1 site is good. Example, mho.com and mho.net. Go to same spot, but they contain the info needed. Why have 2 sites? Now if your refering to having 2 different (entirely seperate) web space for each site (each site having different IP's), and each having the same content, then yes thats a waist. Remove the other site, and have your hosting provider point the A record to the same IP as your other site. Then you only having to pay for 1 site, cause thats all you need.

sparkyfire

[Peter (IMC)]

I think that´s pretty much what we are all saying sparkyfire.

[Alshurf]

Thank you for your advices and interest to my problem!

Let me tell the whole story. :) One of our sites exists already 5 years but two years ago some changes occured in my company and we had to register new domain. Two domains are aliases to one site, so they have the same IP. We pay attention mostly to the new one but I still don`t want to loose the old one because it has good SE rankings and a lot of backlinks.

Sorry for doubts. Sometimes advices are too theoretical and don`t deal with real life. I suppose you have great experince so please answer on these questions: Did you know cases when both sites were penalized in such situation? Will Google consolidate PR and backlinks (If I use 301)?

Thank you!

[Peter (IMC)]

If I make 301 redirect, will google transfer pagerank, everyone say that it will, but I really afraid of loosing links. Will Google transfer links?

I guess when everybody says it will, that means something,. :)

You said in the first post:

(each domain has its own ranking and appears in SERPs on its own position)

I have one question. DO these 2 domains appear in the same SERP?

It´s an important question. It may very well be the case that Google already is dropping pages for certain keyword phrases. Generally when having duplicate pages Google just drops one (generally the higher ranking one) and shows just one result. If you have both domains show up in the same SERP than it means that Google doesn't realize you have duplicate domains. Though I´m starting to doubt that that is the case.

[bhopkins]

I've been wondering a little about this. I have http://www.dynamicvb.net and the .com version of the same name pointing to the same site. Will this get my sites banned as they both have the same content?

[Peter (IMC)]

It won't get your site banned, but duplicate pages may end up getting lower ranks. One of the 2 (you never know which one) gets dropped and the other ranks. BUT, the worse part is that you spread your backlinks over 2 domains which means each will have lesser chances of ranking. Best is to set up a 301 redirect from one domain to the other. That way you still get to have the 2 domains.

[Alshurf]

Thank you for delving into my problem.

Pages appears in different SERPs, but I think that Google really doesn't realize that we have duplicate domains.

One more question, if you don`t mind :-). Is there any possibility that G restore (transfer) ranking of the domain from which redirect was established on the other one?

[jawn_tech]

My suggestion would be to 301 redirect the lesser of the two to the bigger one. That means if one is PR 3 and the other PR 4, redirect the 3 to the 4.

I can understand about wanting multiple domains, one with a hyphen (-) and one without, because Google looks at URL's. It sees a hyphenated domain as two separate keywords, such as "my-example". The other version looks at "myexample" as one word, that no one searces for. But those domains are still valuable too, after people remember the name of your site, they're more likely to type it in as the latter of the two.

[sahuman]

I have had a higher ranking PR site penalized for duplicate content. What ever decision you take - rewriting content, 301 redirect or pulling down one of the sites, do it fast - before Google's duplicate content filter is triggered.

[Alshurf]

thank you! I will make redirect right now!

[DrTandem1]

Sparkyfire-

I think you have the issue confused. It's not that Alshurf has two domains pointing to the same server. The issue is that there are two domains, each with their own server with virtually the same content.

As others have stated, he should drop one server and forward that domain to the remaining domain with the server.

The way it is now, it is like having two separate stores, side by side, with virtually the same name and the same merchandise. It doesn't matter which store a customer uses, the money ends up in the one owner's pocket. Why should the owner of the stores pay for twice the overhead and still see the same revenue?

If he were to market the merchandise to different audiences, then that would be a good reason for two stores. The content and search terms would then be different enough, even with the same merchandise for sale.

Yes, it is a good idea to remove the threat of copycats to your domain name. Just forward the domains, do not duplicate the content.

[primal]

[quote="jawn_tech"]My suggestion would be to 301 redirect the lesser of the two to the bigger one. That means if one is PR 3 and the other PR 4, redirect the 3 to the 4. quote]

I am a little confused as to what the 301 redirect is. On my server I have to options in the redirect menu. That is to permanently redirect or temprarily redirect. Can I assume that the 301 is the permanent redirect?

Regards

Rob

[k-man]

Hey folks!

After reading several strings on this forum I have concluded that people pour their own meanings into many of these terms and of course confusion sets in.


1. If I have two domains ggg.com and ggg.net yet I have only one website, thus both domains 'point' via DNS to the same IP:
a. does this impact my SERPs?
b. can I get 'banned'
c. this seems very common and seemingly ligit so how can it considered blackhat or unethical?

2. The above scenario is NOT a mirrored site or duplicate site, its just two domains pointing to the same site- right?

Hopefully we can somehow get factual answers not just guesses or personal opinions. I appreciate your input.

[arrive]

I am a webmaster and had a customer wanting 2 URL's pointing to the same pages, sitting on my server. I explained that the search engines will ban your sites because that is known as a mirrored site. They bawked and said I didn't know what I was talking about. To-date, the site has been banned from google and lost all page rankings. The other engines are following suit. The company is a believer now but now its going to take another 6 months to re-work this site. Their site is dead in the water unles you know the URL.

Have 2 sites pointing to the same pages, sitting on the same server is not the way to go. If you do have that scenario, you need to pick one URL and use the proper meta tags so the search engines don't crawl it. The perfect scenario would be to move one of the URL's onto another server in case the first server goes down, you've got the back up server and your site is still up and running. That's what larger companies do. For the small guy, 1 URL is all you need. If you want to buy all the domain names that pertain to your site, put different information on each page and link them all to the main site.

Don't be greedy - 1 URL is the best way to go!

Leanne
www.arrivelasvegas.com

[DrTandem1]

K-man:

You just have one DNS setting (plus any alternates that the host offers) for one of the URLs. You then forward the other domain to the URL of the one set to the DNS of the server.

Doing this will not affect your rankings and you will not get banned.

[DrTandem1]

Arrive:

There are several reasons to have more than one domain name for the same site. These include preventing copycats, different languages, easier domain names after you have already established a domain name, etc. Done properly, you will not get banned and it is not greedy. It is protecting one's assets.

[jawn_tech]

Sorry to respond late -- just to answer Rob's (primal's) question...

Yes, a 301 redirect is a permanent redirect, so I would go with that one. If you wanted to do it by hand, it's as simple as one line of code with notepad, saving as a ".htaccess" file. For what to write, check here: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articl...1-redirect.htm

Of course now it's simple to me in hindsight -- when it's explained any other way it seems to sound more technical, but that's all there really is to it.

Good luck!

[loflyn]

We operate a retail site and about a year ago we developed an affiliate program where you could purchase a site from us and be paid an affiliate fee for the sales from that site. The data base for the two servers is unique (though identical) to each server. The Graphics layout is the same however the graphic and the site colors are unique to each affiliate site. Our original site is hosted on its own server, has its own unique url and Ip address. The other affiliate sites are hosted on a totally different server with unique IP addresses. We originally let the affiliate sites be released to the search engines because our affiliates were paying for their own site on the Internet. We found this was a problem as they each came into the search engine rankings because the search engines actually hid the duplicate site listings alpabetically and this forced our main site not to show up many times. Based on that result we started rejecting the spiders on the affiliate sites however we still have many listings still there after 6 months.
I'm looking for some accurate feedback as to whether our main site has now been affected or labeled a mirror site as our Google traffic has recently dropped radically. Does anyone have any information that would help? Does anyone have a recommendation as how to fix this?

[freehits]

Originally Posted by DrTandem1

Arrive:

There are several reasons to have more than one domain name for the same site. These include preventing copycats, different languages, easier domain names after you have already established a domain name, etc. Done properly, you will not get banned and it is not greedy. It is protecting one's assets.

I though this made sense too, and copycatting was the major concern, I had even gone so far as to dynamically change the h1 and h2 tag structure based on the incoming source of the redirect coming from our .net and .com and '-' versions of the same name we wished to protect. We are currently this particular site not getting crawled past index for 3 months. I had been under the assumption it was a dup content issue. The examples you give and clear reasons why this should not be an issue if it is.