Competitor owns two domains which are essentially duplicates. Is this allowed?
-
Hello everyone,One of my competitors has two E-commerce sites that are almost exactly the same. The company re-branded a few years ago (changed the company name, changed the domain name) but kept the first domain live which is still fairly successful. Their re-branded website is a Top 1000 retailer.The thing is, both websites are essentially the EXACT SAME. They have the same products (with the same item #'s), the same pricing, the same copy and product descriptions, the same contact info, same layout, etc. The internal search bar on the first domain even redirects to their current site! The only real difference are the brand names. Currently, both sites are ranking very well for some very competitive keywords. For the past two years, I kept waiting for Google to penalize one (or both) of them for duplication. But for some reason Google seems to have not noticed. **Is there any way to "show google" site duplication they might be missing?**Thanks!
-
Thank you for your responses. I will look into maybe calling attention to this via the webspam report.
-
I agree with you Sorina. As I said, what Bryan is reporting is not really an issue of web spam, but using the Google web spam report might bring the two sites to Google's attention to at least look at the issue.
Without being able to see able to see the two sites and compare them to see if the content on both of them is substantially the same as Bryan has suggested this is a bit of a head scratcher. We can only speculate about, but I guess Bryan may not be too keen on a public forum to post the URLs.
Peter
-
Two websites with the same content is not web spam... I don't think this approach will work.
Maybe the content is not really the same - what we see as "the content" may not be the same for Google. Maybe the older website ranks because it has authority and the newer one, even if it has the same products and descriptions maybe it has a lot of client reviews that makes Google not consider it duplicate since the reviews add value and original content... -
Hi Bryan
Have you tried reporting through Google's web spam report?
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport
It's not quite the issue you have but it may at least bring the issue to Google's attention.
Peter
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
-
Do we lose Backlinks and Domain Authority of URL when we change domain Name?
Have 1 performing domain (Monthly - 4M visitor ) now we want to change domain name ( Brand name like SEOMOZ to Moz ). I have general knowledge about domain changing prevention tips like 301 redirection and other thing. My concern is about backlinks and DA. How can I prevent any lose from SEO Point of view. (backlink lose) Do I need to change all backlink form source or redirection is enough to get all reference traffic from that backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
How should I use the 2nd link if a site allows 2 in the body of a guest post?
I've been doing some guest posting, and some sites allow one link, others allow more. I'm worried I might be getting too many guest posts with multiple links. I'd appreciate your thoughts on the following: 1. If there are 50+ guest posts going to my website (posted over the span of several months), each with 2 links pointing back only to my site is that too much of a pattern? How would you use the 2nd link in a guest post if not to link to your own site? 2. Does linking to .edu or .gov in the guest post make the post more valuable in terms of SEO? Some people recommend using the 2nd link to do this. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Redirecting old domains for SEO ranking?
It's been a while since I read anything seriously out of the box on SEO but I thought I would see what others thought of the bold assertions made in this article. Most of it revolves around buying expired domains and using a 301 to point them, and their juice, to new sites. This guy makes a living doing this so he has to know a bit more than the average Joe but I'm wondering where the other shoe is and when it drops.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Highland0 -
Schema.org tricking and duplicate content across domains
I've found the following abuse, and Im curious what could I do about it. Basically the scheme is: own some content only once (pictures, description, reviews etc) use different domain names (no problem if you use the same IP or IP-C address) have a different layout (this is basically the key) use schema.org tricking, meaning show (the very same) reviews on different scale, show a little bit less reviews on one site than on an another Quick example: http://bit.ly/18rKd2Q
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sved
#2: budapesthotelstart.com/budapest-hotels/hotel-erkel/szalloda-attekintes.hu.html (217.113.62.21), 328 reviews, 8.6 / 10
#6: szallasvadasz.hu/hotel-erkel/ (217.113.62.201), 323 reviews, 4.29 / 5
#7: xn--szlls-gyula-l7ac.hu/szallodak/erkel-hotel/ (217.113.62.201), no reviews shown It turns out that this tactic even without the 4th step can be quite beneficial to rank with several domains. Here is a little investigation I've done (not really extensive, took around 1 and a half hour, but quite shocking nonetheless):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqbt1cVFlhXbdENGenFsME5vSldldTl3WWh4cVVHQXc#gid=0 Kaspar Szymanski from Google Webspam team said that they have looked into it, and will do something, but honestly I don't know whether I could believe it or not. What do you suggest? should I leave it, and try to copy this tactic to rank with the very same content multiple times? should I deliberately cheat with markups? should I play nice and hope that these guys sooner or later will be dealt with? (honestly can't see this one working out) should I write a case study for this, so maybe if the tactics get bigger attention, then google will deal with it? Does anybody could push this towards Matt Cutts, or anybody else who is responsible for these things?0 -
Keyword Specific Domain | Outranking trend
Hey everyone, i looked for a similar question but didnt found anything. Ive been having a lot trouble competing with other websites that use the "exact-keyword" domain (www.keyword.com), then they just stuff some mediocre content and rank 1-3 in Google SERP for that keyword I wasnt worried before because i thought they were going to be penalized or decreased in ranking. But they bought several keyword domains and outrank everyone in almost every word. Their conversion rate cant be that good because of the mediocre content, but still i dont like the fact that they rank better just because of the keyword. Any comment on this? , what would you do? Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JesusD0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi, I have a website with over 500 pages. The website is a home service website that services clients in different areas of the UK. My question is, am I able to take down the pages from my URL, leave them down for say a week, so when Google bots crawl the pages, they do not exist. Can I then re upload them to a different website URL, and then Google wont penalise me for duplicate content? I know I would of lost juice and page rank, but that doesnt really matter, because the site had taken a knock since the Google update. Thanks for your help. Chris,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chrisellett0 -
Penalised by Google - Should I Redirect to a new domain?
Last month my rankings dropped a couple of pages on Google and am no longer receiving as many visits from Google as I used to. It's coming up to summer which is the time my business naturally picks up yet I can't fix this problem. I have a crazy idea of redirecting my established site onto a new domain in hopes that the penalty would be removed. I have tried removing any manipulative links yet my ranking are not coming back. Anyone had success in redirecting to a new domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn730 -
Auto-link inside your own site to the same domain is white-hat?
Hi, I am using a plugin in wordpress that make auto link for some certain keywords in my site suppose: My site is example.com My important keyword is: sample and across the domain example.com through out the content if there is the word: sample it is linked automatically to example.com I like your opinion about this practice, if it may carry any kind of punishment by SEs? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pooria0