Google Question

[barenzr]

I have a website http://www.apartmentsontheweb.com. When I started the site I had a couple of other domains that I purchased that I thought I may use in the future http://www.aptsontheweb.com & http://www.rentinmilwaukee.com. I had the webmaster just forward those links to my main domain. I haven't had success ranking in Google for my keywords but I have been #1 in Yahoo & MSN.

Could I be recieving a duplicate content penalty from Google? We do not advertise the other domains at all, should I just dump those domains all together and remove the forwarding? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[aaron2005]

If the content is identical on 3 sites it is spam, you could change each of the sites focus but isn't that also little greedy? How about having one website that is really cool?

I have one website for each of my hobbies because all are different.

[google junky]

http://www.aptsontheweb.com -- did not forward
http://www.rentinmilwaukee.com -- did forward
http://www.apartmentsontheweb.com -- is what it is supposed to be

apartmentsontheweb.com
Milwaukee apartment #41

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=Milwaukee+apartment&hl=en&lr=&start=40&sa=N

apartmentsontheweb.com
Milwaukee apartments #44 (with an "s")

I'm not really crazy about the site prsearch.net, but I was able to manipulate the url to work for searching with the new data center. Just edit the url for what you are looking for. The number it gives for your position will only be a little off from what is actually at google. Someone else may have a beter resource than this.

http://www.prsearch.net/rankmass.php?allq=Milwaukee+apartment&searchurl=www.apartmentsontheweb.com&select=1000&gdomain=66.102.9.104&Submit=Search

[barenzr]

Thanks a lot for the tips!

If it is considered spam then I will stop using the other url's.

Also thanks for the handy link.

[RAUS]

I have a website http://www.apartmentsontheweb.com. When I started the site I had a couple of other domains that I purchased that I thought I may use in the future http://www.aptsontheweb.com & http://www.rentinmilwaukee.com. I had the webmaster just forward those links to my main domain. I haven't had success ranking in Google for my keywords but I have been #1 in Yahoo & MSN.

Could I be recieving a duplicate content penalty from Google? We do not advertise the other domains at all, should I just dump those domains all together and remove the forwarding? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

As I understand your question, you have three domains.

Only one of them "www.apartmentsontheweb.com" has content.

The other domains do not have any content. They just forward people to the domain with the content.

I may be wrong, but I do not think that there is any way for a robot to think that the two sites have duplicate content.

The robot will not find any content on the empty domain.

In fact, because there is no content, and the robot is instantly forwarded to the other URL, the forwarded URL will never even show up in the search engines.

One URL is simply sending people to another URL.

The only way to change this would be to also turn on masking. Then, the host sets up a page, with meta content, and the other domain's content is displayed in a frame on that page.

If I am wrong, would someone please let me know!

The non-profit I am helping recently had 4 different people register domain names only one letter different from theirs, and put similar content on them.

After a struggle, they were forced to shut down, and their domain names now forward to a directory on the no-profits web site, with 301 redirects pointing to the non-profits main page.

However, in addition, the non-profit has registered every variation of their name, in .com .net .org .info .biz and .us

This is to stop anyone else from registering these domains and trying to mislead people.

None of these domains have any content. They simply forward people to the non-profits main site.

If doing this, is hurting them in the SEs, please let me know.

By the way, they still rank in the top 20, often top 5, for most of their key phrases on Google.

Thank you,
Harris

[whipnet]

I point whipnet.org and whipnet.net to whipnet.com. They are just redirects and no content. The other sites do not get indexed in SE's, the domain with content does.

I don't think this adversely affects me.

*

[barenzr]

The reason I was concerned is because if I type in “aptsontheweb” or “rentinmilwaukee” into Google those specific domains http://www.aptsontheweb.com & http://www.rentinmilwaukee both come up. The way I took this is that those sites were indexed by Google and may be giving me a duplicate content penalty even though they simply forward to my main domain http://www.apartmentsontheweb.com.

Is this correct???

[RAUS]

The reason I was concerned is because if I type in “aptsontheweb” or “rentinmilwaukee” into Google those specific domains http://www.aptsontheweb.com & http://www.rentinmilwaukee both come up. The way I took this is that those sites were indexed by Google and may be giving me a duplicate content penalty even though they simply forward to my main domain http://www.apartmentsontheweb.com.

Is this correct???

As far as I can tell, these domains do not simply forward to your main domain.

They appear to be duplicate domains with duplicate content.

If you were simply forwarding to your main domain, the URL would change to the URL of your main domain as soon as the page started loading.

Even if you had masking turned on, the URL would change as soon as you clicked on one of your navigation tabs. View Source would show a page with a frame to hold your main site.

The way you have it set up right now, it does seem as though you have three identical web sites with three domain names and identical content.

I suggest that you log on to your domain registar, and adjust your settings so that these domains truly just forward to your main domain.

You will know this is working because once the registar has updated its records (perhaps 24 hours), the URL will change to your main domains URL when you type in one of the secondary domains in your browser.

Once this is corrected, you can go to Google, they have a page where you can delete pages from their database, and then delete all of the pages listed under the secondary domains.

PS: When you figure out how this happened, please write and let us know.

Harris

[incrediblehelp]

Their are so many well written threads on WPW on this topic already, please do a search and you will find.

[jacobwissler]

Why should Google index duplicate content? For example, if you posted the U.S. Constitution on your website, you have every right to do that, but with 500,000 copies already on the Internet, why should a search engine index another copy of the same document?