Constructing an International Copy of a Site

[andrewspencer]

I work for NetSuite Australia and we are just about to upgrade our site.

Our intention is to essentially copy our USA site in its entirety but localizing only those links and items that are specific to us.

I am very much aware that search engines detect site copies, and sites can be penalized for link value capture when constructing to very similar sites.

By copying the USA site, do we run the risk of severe penalties from search engines? Is there an advice you can give us?

[flood6]

Well, if the translations are going to be so similar that SEs might see them as duplicate content, do you really need two versions? Maybe try to find some middle-ground with the text so it fits with the US and Aussie visitors. Where they will really need to be very different (addresses, contact info, metric system, whatever), create separate pages and let the visitors decide which version they need; if they're really that different, the SEs won't see them as dupes. Two little hyper-linked flags at the top should get the point across.

You could provide the different pages based on IP address. Known Aussie IPs get the pages designed for them, US IPs get their pages. Of course, this is cloaking which comes with its own set of risks.

[wwwizzard]

I am not sure that you will be penalised, but one of the results might not show up or only show up as duplicate content. Google for example will only only list what it thinks is the most relevant and give you the option to view all the "duplicated" or similar pages.

Do you think Google penalises itself because they have the following VERY similar sites:
google.com
google.com.au
coogle.co.uk?

Consider the following search:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-42,GGLG:en&q=%22errol+cosgrove%22

and then click to see the "omitted results".

Not that I really know, but that is my 5 cents worth.

[andrewspencer]

Do you think Google penalises itself because they have the following VERY similar sites:
google.com
google.com.au
coogle.co.uk?

Google sites are technically quite different to the case we are building. Essentially there is simply a front page for the same search, with a couple of altered parameters by country.

With the NetSuite sites we are building 250 pages of text that is essentially very similar to the other 450 pages of NetSuite USA.

Anyway Google is Google the top dog and they can do what Google wants to value each site as and how it operates. It is like the Government they can organize things to suit themsleves. We gotta do things according to the world they created for us.

So what must we do to come high in the searches? Have completely different information, our own links to the world, our own incoming links?