subdomains causing duplicate content penalty in Google?

[sdadesky]

Why can I not find my site when using "link:hotel-hunter.com" or "cache:hotel-hunter.com" ?

There are not many back-links to it, but there are some. Yahoo finds them...

Also, the site http://www.hotel-hunter.com seems to have dropped off the charts in Google. I used mcdar.net's great tools to check my back links on different engines and in all cases none are found for Google. What gives?

Frankly, I took my eye off this site for about 4 months as I was deluged by other work, but in that time my Alexa ranking went from 98,000 + to 1,000,000 +, quite a slippage. I don't give too much credence to Alexa anyway, because I noticed how easy it is to manipulate the results just by checking your own page constantly with Alexa loaded. But google is more serious.

I have 2 suspicions, so maybe somebody can cast some light on them:
- My site relies heavily on javascript so I used to have a "noscript" tag at the top of each page redirecting users who have javascript turned off (in stead of at the bottom of any entry pages, as it should be). Could this have redirected all the google bots off the main content page - always? If so this could be a valuable lesson in what NOT to do for google optimization. (I have since fixed this)

- For a few top destinations (lasvegas.hotel-hunter.com) I use subdomains. Could I be penalized for dupe content? But actually what this does is serve up a page that is DIFFERENT (focused on Las Vegas) from my normal entry page. Also, if anything I would have thought such treatment would cause all pages to have the same ranking in google, and not for google to completely stop ranking them alltogehter.

[google junky]

I only have one thing for you as far as the sub domain part.

http://shop.statelinetack.com and http://www.statelinetack.com are duplicates. This is owned by PetSmart. They have had shop.statelinetack.com setup for about 4 months now I guess. Even with duplicate content they were never penalized, nor dropped one even one click in position.

If you look at shop.statelinetack.com you will notice that along with duplicate content they also have links directed to the other site. The whole opening page is simply links to the other. There are no sidepages to shop.statelinetack.com

When the big "Joker Update" started they didn't move either and still havn't.

Looks like it is ok to have duplicate content on a subdomain. I wouldn't have agreed with it being allowed , but that is a good example for you.



I wouldn't say these are good backlinks. The sites are all practically identical and simply link sites. You may want to move on to sites that have content.

superiorhotelsites.com/?k=hotel-rooms-online
superiorhotelsites.com/?k=hotel-rooms--suites
fabcredit.com/?k=HotelMotel-Credit-car-tape-key
fabconsolidation.com/?k=hotel-motel-transportation-consolidation-servic
fabconsolidation.com/?k=\\hotel-motel-transportation-consolidation-servic
topfloridasites.com/?k=florida-tax-on-hotel-rooms

[sdadesky]

Originally Posted by google junky

Looks like it is ok to have duplicate content on a subdomain. I wouldn't have agreed with it being allowed , but that is a good example for you.

Hi, google junky. Yes, I noticed same thing with the

keyword category behemoth

, hotels.com. If you type the url http://www.hotels.com or http://sanfrancisco.hotels.com you get idential home page, down to the word. Yet both have great PR and former always comes up close to top when searching fof san francisco hotels. Of course, they have thousands of quality backlinks...

Speaking of which...

Originally Posted by google junky

I wouldn't say these are good backlinks. The sites are all practically identical and simply link sites. You may want to move on to sites that have content.

superiorhotelsites.com/?k=hotel-rooms-online
superiorhotelsites.com/?k=hotel-rooms--suites
fabcredit.com/?k=HotelMotel-Credit-car-tape-key
fabconsolidation.com/?k=hotel-motel-transportation-consolidation-servic
fabconsolidation.com/?k=\\hotel-motel-transportation-consolidation-servic
topfloridasites.com/?k=florida-tax-on-hotel-rooms

Yes, they're junk. But those were not sought out. I am working on a strategy for developing quality inbound links through a very useful hotel tool for downloading, perhaps even with a affiliate referral payment system. Still debating the latter.

[aaron2005]

I am looking at About.com and wondering about how they have their site setup. They get HUGE results and use subdomains to neatly separate content. It appears they are also using subdomains exactly the way they were intended, and this is smart.

As for duplicate content, seems a bit risky for future updates, if I was an engine I would logically only allow one entry or weaken the result of duplicates to lower their rank and postition.

[sdadesky]

Originally Posted by aaron2005

I am looking at About.com... It appears they are also using subdomains exactly the way they were intended, and this is smart.

As for duplicate content, seems a bit risky for future updates, if I was an engine I would logically only allow one entry or weaken the result of duplicates to lower their rank and postition.

I was wondering about this issue too. When I set up my somerealcityname.hotel-hunter.com site functionality, I did so because I noticed google gives big relevance to keywords in the url. Also I wanted an easy way to direct my visitors to appropriate content, not just to the site's main page.

My big hesitation was: do I leave the subdomain permanently as "realcityname" or redirect to main site (www) on that page or subsequent links/posts in order not to diffuse the page rank across many sub domains.

I opted for redirecting everything to main site. Still not sure if this was smart.

[google junky]

Here is an update so that I don't repeat myself here.
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...=312955#312955