mirrored websites

[earthsusan]

Has any one noticed the phenomenon of mirrored websites? One of our offshore web hosting competitors that is repeatedly ranking in the top three across many directories and search engines for the term "offshore web hosting" mirrors dozens of other sites. This seems to really boost its link popularity and thus rankings.

Can someone speak to the advantages/disadvantages of mirroring another company's website?

Thanks. Susan

[redcircle]

I feel this method is taking advantage of the SEO from a moral standpoint would be wrong. Yes you may get better placement but will you get better results as far as sales?

I have a nextel i90 and I wanted to find out how to make my own ringtones and put them on my phone so I searched for

"i90 ringtones"

The first 20 pages of results go to the exact same webpage.

This does not help me. This greatly angers me because they are keeping me from the information and selection of different sites I wish to find not just mirrors upon mirrors. I hope google will fix this technique.

[earthsusan]

Thanks for your reply. Maybe I should clarify - our company is thinking of mirroring websites for mostly freeware programming - sites where people are downloading large files, which would go faster if they were downloading from a server close to their physical location.

The whole situation of creating doorway pages and mirror pages I agree is a bit unethical. But in this case, it seems like it would be doing people a service in the name of free and easier access on the internet.

Susan

[TheWebDoctor(tm)]

Do not mirror your site with another domain, sub-domain, or directory of another domain. That is pure spamming. If you see it done, report it to the search engines. They have a process for taking care of that situation.

Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

The above quote is from:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

The search engines love to know when a company is attempting to defraud them. Until they are able to scan the information of a page and do an adequate comparison, they need our help as professionals and netizens.

I have reported a competitor of one of my clients for having over 20 sites with the exact same information as the original site. Some of the looks are different, but the content is exactly the same.

I don't mind calling search engines and discussing the problems with them either.

I hope this answers your question.