Multiple domain names with similar content
-
Hi, we've got multiple domains that point to the same website and same content. The only difference is the currency and some text, you could say only about 5% difference in each domain's content:
http://www.redwrappings.com.au/
http://www.redwrappings.com/Will Google penalise us for having 95% similar content for each domain (they sell the same products but in different currencies)?
We shoudn't really put canonical link, should we? Because 5% of the content is different, which means they are not identical. What would be the best solution if this is a problem?
Thanks
-
Hi Alan,
Thanks for that. We do want to boost the rank on one domain compared to other domains, so i think this is the way to go.
Cheers
-
Hi Graham,
In my experience cannonical content issues can arise with content that is only 50% similar. The strange thing is that in other cases I've had content that is 99.9% similar that hasn't been flagged by search engines.
There is a trick for identifiying the possiblity for duplicate content issues. It's outlined in this video series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9AfEfTFgzM&feature=player_embedded
There are three parts to the video, and I must admit it is quite cheesy but the information is solid.
-
I don't believe it's a penalty, but seems a lot of people have this same question. Google: "There's no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that."
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html
If I remember correct Rand Fishkin says in this webinar that it's gonna hurt, but you may want to watch it to be 100%! I remember it being sometime after 40-50% of the webinar I think. http://www.seomoz.org/dp/pro-webinar-october-2010-with-rand-fishkin
Good luck!
-
yes it will be seen as duplicate,
yes i would use rel=canonical so that the one site is getting ranked, but then your other sites wont rank so well.
you could 301 redirect them all to the same site then do somthing iun the code to present the 5% of changes to the correct users.
but then you have the pproblem of .com not ranking as well as .com.au in Australia.
if you want to keep the .com and the .com.au then you really need to make sites that are differentunless you can afford to maintain 2 vastly diffeernt sites, and can afford 2 SEO campains, i would 301 redirect to the one url. if you have links pointing to both domains then doing a 301 redirect will assign all link juice to one site, you may see a boost in the search engines.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 Domain Redirect from old domain with HTTPS
My domain was indexed with HTTPS://WWW. now that we redirected it the certificate has been removed and if you try to visit the old site with https it throws an obvious error that this sites not secure and the 301 does not happen. My question is will googles bot have this issue. Right now the domain has been in redirection status to the new domain for a couple months and the old site is still indexed, while the new one is not ranking well for half its terms. If that is not causing the problem can anyone tell me why would the 301 take such a long time. Ive double and quadruple checked the 301's and all settings to ensure its being redirected properly. Yet it still hasn't fully redirected. Something is wrong and my clients ready to ditch the old domain we worked on for a good amount of time. backgorund:About 30 days ago we found some redirect loops .. well not loop but it was redirecting from old domain to the new domain several times without error. I removed the plugins causing the multi redirects and now we have just one redirect from any page on the old domain to the new https version. Any suggestions? This is really frustrating me and I just can't figure it out. My only answer at this point is wait it out because others have had this issue where it takes up to 2 months to redirect the domain. My only issue is that this is the first domain redirect out of many that have ever taken more than a week or three.
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
Duplicate Content from Multiple Sources Cross-Domain
Hi Moz Community, We have a client who is legitimately repurposing, or scraping, content from site A to site B. I looked into it and Google recommends the cross-domain rel=canonical tag below: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html The issue is it is not a one to one situation. In fact site B will have several pages of content from site A all on one URL. Below is an example of what they are trying to accomplish. EX - www.siteB.com/apples-and-oranges is made up of content from www.siteA.com/apples & www.siteB.com/oranges So with that said, are we still in fear of getting hit for duplicate content? Should we add multiple rel=canonical tags to reflect both pages? What should be our course of action.
Technical SEO | | SWKurt0 -
How different does content need to be to avoid a duplicate content penalty?
I'm implementing landing pages that are optimized for specific keywords. Some of them are substantially the same as another page (perhaps 10-15 words different). Are the landing pages likely to be identified by search engines as duplicate content? How different do two pages need to be to avoid the duplicate penalty?
Technical SEO | | WayneBlankenbeckler0 -
Duplicate content vs. less content
Hi, I run a site that is currently doing very well in google for the terms that we want. We are 1,2 or 3 for our 4 targeted terms, but havent been able to jump to number one in two categories that I would really like to. In looking at our site, I didn't realize we have a TON of duplicate content as seen by SEO moz and I guess google. It appears to be coming from our forum, we use drupal. RIght now we have over 4500 pages of duplicate content. Here is my question: How much is this hurting us as we are ranking high. Is it better to kill the forum (which is more community service than business) and have a very tight site SEO-wise, or leave the forum even with the duplicate content. Thanks for your help. Erik
Technical SEO | | SurfingNosara0 -
Blog.domain.co.uk or domain.co.uk/blog
Hi Guys, I'm just wondering which offers more SEO value and which is easier to set up out of: blog.domain.co.uk domain.co.uk/blog Thanks, Dan
Technical SEO | | Sparkstone0 -
How to force a trailing slash after the domain name
My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it.. Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess
Technical SEO | | JollyBoy0 -
Hyphenated Domain Names - "Spammy" or Not?
Some say hyphenated domain names are "spammy". I have also noticed that Moz's On Page Keyword Tool does NOT recognize keywords in a non-hyphenated domain name. So one would assume neither do the bots. I noticed obviously misleading words like car in carnival or spa in space or spatula, etc embedded in domain names and pondered the effect. I took it a step further with non-hyphenated domain names. I experimented by selecting totally random three or four letter blocks - Example: randomfactgenerator.net - rand omf act gene rator Each one of those clips returns copious results AND the On-Page Report Card does not credit the domain name as containing "random facts" as keywords**,** whereas www.business-sales-sarasota.com does get credit for "business sales sarasota" in the URL. This seems an obvious situation - unhyphenated domains can scramble the keywords and confuse the bots, as they search all possible combinations. YES - I know the content should carry it but - I do not believe domain names are irrelevant, as many say. I don't believe that hyphenated domain names are not more efficient than non hyphenated ones - as long as you don't overdo it. I have also seen where a weak site in an easy market will quickly top the list because the hyphenated domain name matches the search term - I have done it (in my pre Seo Moz days) with ft-myers-auto-air.com. I built the site in a couple of days and in a couple weeks it was on page one. Any thoughts on this?
Technical SEO | | dcmike0 -
Registering a domain for multiple years
Does registering or renewing a domain name for more than a year improve search as a result of a more trusted site and company that will seem to be around for longer than just a year?
Technical SEO | | Motava0