Am I spamming Google with duplicate content?

[darren13]

Due to the nature of our business, we have multiple domains. Is there a way (such as a tag maybe) that we can tell the search engines that http://www.halcyonholidays.com and http://www.halcyonholidaycottages.co.uk will have the same content?

Our situation is that due to marketing reasons we run both sites, but with nearly exactly the same content. Obviously we don't want search engines to think we're spamming. So at the moment I've got a robot.txt file stopping search engines from searching the .com site.

This is not ideal though, as I don't want spiders (and therefore visitors) to miss our site at the .com address. If I remove the instruction in the robots.txt file on my .com site will Google, Msn and Yahoo think I'm spamming, or am I safe to do so?

I've asked Google, but got the answer I expected - "no comment". Can't blame them, but no help to me obviously...

Over and out,

Darren Roberts.

[vukodlak]

Hi Darren

Its very hard to say. Duplicate content will probbably get 1 of your sites penalised.

I know of a particular website that has recently changed from a long web address to short, kept the 2 running and slowly the new one is the only 1 that shows up in the search engine with no trace of the old 1. If that makes sense. Both were .com.au URL though.

I would pick 1 and work on that. insted of havin 2 same site. SEO for 1 site is hard enough these days.

Miss the good old META days.

Anyways
Good Luck

[MathsIsFun]

I started a thread asking for advice on handling US vs UK spelling. One idea was to have two almost identical sites, and the duplicate content issue came up.

The consensus seemed to be that Google will choose one of the matching pages and shoot the other way down.

I don't think Google goes around the net penalizing duplicate pages. I imagine it does something like a two-step process 1) find all matching pages best-to-worst, then 2) from the top down look for duplicate content and push those pages down. Simply to make the searchers experience a better one.

(But still there are some people who think both pages will be punished as spam.)

[DMC_34]

I have seen cases where the secondary page is caught by the duplicate content filter and vice versa. It was always my understanding Google was obligated to determine the original content and penalize the duplicate content. I guess by which page was indexed first. But this is the same problem with hijacking content and 302 redirects. Sometimes the original page gets filtered and the duplicate now ranks in its place. I doubt both will ever get ranked.

[adbart]

I think, to be safe, you should just stick with one of the domains.

As a previous poster said, SEO is hard enough for one site, and you don't want to run the risk of getting your page lowered in PageRank, or worse, banned permanently by Google.

[Heal3r]

Some alternative views...

So let the SE index both your sites. One will get all the ranking, the other may or may not. It's better than at the moment only having one site even indexed yah? And sure there may be a penalty applied on one of your sites on G**gle, but maybe you get an extra top spot on Yahooey and MessN if they don't penalize like an over zealous hockey, scratch that, soccer ref.

Or build a third site, and change the content enough to avoid a penalty.

You want some experts opinion to know what is best, truth is, no one can offer a truly definitive answer.

As for me, I'd build a third site. So 2 for organic rankings, and use one of the duplicate sites exclusively for PPC landings.

Or hire someone to tweak the second site enough to avoid duplication penalties.

Or just wait till someone give syou the magic answer.

Best of luck on all your decisions.

[adbart]

What an enlightening response.

[MathsIsFun]

You will want to choose one site/page for your in-bound links. One site with 200 IBLs is better than 2 sites with 100 each.

Why do you have 2 sites? Is it so that the search engines see one as a UK site?

[adbart]

One site with 200 IBLs is better than 2 sites with 100 each.
Yeah, I'd definitely go with that.

Like I previously said, doing 100% amount of SEO work on one site will pay off a lot more than 50% of your time and effort on two of them.

[darren13]

Thanks very much for the advice guys, I think I can draw some conclusions from the general consensus...

I do not think I would be having these issues if the whole search industry had not been so 'intensively farmed' for lack of a better phrase...still. Onwards and upwards.

If anyone wants any advice on holiday cottages (or how to avoid two-timing sheep, call our hotline!

All the best boyo's (as we say in Wales)
Darren.

[Conficio]

Due to the nature of our business, we have multiple domains. Is there a way (such as a tag maybe) that we can tell the search engines that http://www.halcyonholidays.com and http://www.halcyonholidaycottages.co.uk will have the same content?
Hi Robert,
There is! It is called different content. You could develop a en-US language version or add content that is more relevant for US customers. An easy way to do so is look for a few links to resources that are relevant to your constituency and add them to the US version (such as visa regulations, US embassy/consulate addresses, US celebrities that have visited the area recently, etc.)

You could also write a script that (ex)changes slightly some constant content, that is hardly visible to users such as titles, alt text on images, phone numbers, etc.

By the way I do not believe that Google penalizes two identical sites. It certainly does filter dozens and hundreds of duplicates. However, if you think of what your different visitors want from your different sites it might be even effective for humans as well as search engines.

Another option is to simply have a specific section for all those country specific interests and serve them from the same site (two domains pointing to the same server). It will bring up only one in the SERPs but it has the added power of incoming links pointing to the very same site. Although I think the UK version of Google would favor the uk domain and vice versa.

My 2 cents

K<o>

[cspelts]

[quote=darren13]resources that are relevant to your constituency and add them to the US version (such as visa regulations, US embassy/consulate addresses, US celebrities that have visited the area recently, etc.)
I think that's a brilliant idea!

[Conficio]

I think that's a brilliant idea!

And I thought it was almost to obvious to mention! I'm glad I did :-)

K<o>

[sqrzrus]

I sent a message to support at google after reading all the documentation and they responded that they do not review websites.

Our problem is that we have a client with National office that feeds the local offices. We want the customers at the local offices to have access to a library of information - well - that means all 22 offices have the same information. We want the National office to get the highest search result - but from what I understand there is no way to make sure that happens - but we are not trying to fool the search engines - we are trying to provide information to customers - I find this frustrating... and challenging.

I like the idea of a snippet of code that would tell google - thsi is duplicate content.

[Conficio]

I sent a message to support at google after reading all the documentation and they responded that they do not review websites.

Our problem is that we have a client with National office that feeds the local offices. We want the customers at the local offices to have access to a library of information - well - that means all 22 offices have the same information. We want the National office to get the highest search result - but from what I understand there is no way to make sure that happens - but we are not trying to fool the search engines - we are trying to provide information to customers - I find this frustrating... and challenging.

I like the idea of a snippet of code that would tell google - this is duplicate content.
I'm not sure if that is a really a problem. Google will most of the time just show the national site in it's results (as this is likely the one that has links to it) and not show the local one's (as it likely detects them as copies.

However, as search engines love to look for local content now, make sure that each local site has the local content (address, phone, key people names with links to their biographies, area of business, driving directions, etc.) on every page or at least on some main pages.

May be you can get some localized content and include it in some key spots (at least at the home page). I think of local weather, local news, local sports news, what ever would interest your clients. May be you can get this as RSS feed. Make sure this content is injected on the server, so the search engines recognize it (remember they don't interpret Java Script, etc.). Use links to the national site sparingly (not more than 2 - 3, definitely not from every page)

All of the sudden you have a local site, that also has some more local value to your customers/visitors and likely tops the national site only in cases where people look with a local bias, like "National Mortgage in Boston, MA".

If you want to top this, let every local branch write their own blog and you soon get totally different sites, that just happen to contain a few common pages. how often do you find the same Linux HowTo pages on different websites? They are not penalized, because they are not a complete copy all pointing to the same original.

I think you do not have a problem but an opportunity at your hands. You end up with 22 naturally grown local sites, that forward their high value PR to the main site. And you control them all!

K<o>

[adbart]

However, as search engines love to look for local content now, make sure that each local site has the local content (address, phone, key people names with links to their biographies, area of business, driving directions, etc.) on every page or at least on some main pages.
This seems to be increasingly important.

Google is now trying to give users results relevant to topic + area. Better web presence for your local offices might even help your ranking for your national office...

[darren13]

Thanks for all your comments guys - that's put my mind at rest a lot - now I think I'm at least reasonably safe with what I'm doing!
Darren
Halcyon Holiday Cottages
darren@halcyonholidaycottages.co.uk
http://www.halcyonholidaycottages.co.uk

[Manpasand]

I have also two domains www.online-web-solutions.com and www.onlinewebsolutions.in

Main site is online-web-solutions.com and onlinewebsolutions.in domain want to use for region specific in future. I have used fresh content and meta tages in .in domain's home page and rest of the links to the main site.

Will SEs treate SPAMMING?

[adbart]

No, by the sounds of it, it is a significantly different page with different content.

You should be okay.