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
-
Massive Spam attack against my domain - automate disvow of tld?
We've been getting hundreds of new links from unique domains every day - all the domains follow a pattern like this: www.someword-1f4163e1.space/wiki/Someterm Hundreds... every day. What techniques exist to deal with a prolonged negative seo attack of this type. By the time we can detect and disvow, the damage is done.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sonar0 -
Should I disavow links to a dead sub domain?
I'm analyzing a client's website today and I found that they have over 300 spammy sites linking to a subdomain of their main site. So for example, say their site is clientsite.com, well they have hundreds of links pointing to deadsite.clientsite.com. That subdomain was used at one time as a staging site, and is no longer active. Are those hundreds of spammy sites hurting or potentially hurting my client's SEO? Or is it a non-issue because the links point to a dead subdomain? We believe that that staging sub domain site was hacked at one time, and thats where all those spammy links came from. Should I disavow them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rubennunez0 -
Better ranking competitors have paid links from blog pages
I have a trial of all the tools at the moment and it's a lot of fun. I have been delving into site explorer and found that some competitors have links to them from obvious seo promoting paid blog sites. One has no other links except a paid for blog from a site that openly admits it offers paid marketing and they shot up to 4th on page one for a main keyword phrase. The info from moz and matt cuts video's say not to do this, but it's so tempting. The blog is well written, while I sit here and do the right thing, my competitors have page one. If the blog is well written and is meaningful is it OK and if google ever decide it's paid and don't like it, wouldn't it be better to be page one for 6 months and then recover? I'd love to give the link to the seo, blogger thingy but don't want to come across as promoting it in any way. I am sure there are loads of them anyway.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Peter24680 -
SERP dropping along with competitors - Google algorithm mix up?
I am hoping someone will have some insight as our recent ranking drop has been driving me crazy trying to figure out what happened. Our site is www.dgrlegal.com. We've been building links by creating quality content and getting others to link to it. We've seen our rankings rise to 3 for a number of keywords. Suddenly around March we saw a pretty drastic drop but only for certain keywords (maybe a Penguin hit?). For example, "new jersey process service" still has us ranked 3rd but "new jersey process server" sees us much lower around 19. I've noticed several competitors have dropped while one has risen so is this negative SEO? Probably not as our backlink profile doesn't seem suspicious but it has me very confused. We've received no warnings or notices from Google. The only thing I see is that our indexed pages went from 13 to 98 in January and have been now steadily increasing to 129, although I thought this would be a positive. Any suggestions or thoughts? I thought maybe things would shake out but it hasn't happened as of yet - we just keep dropping.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | amandadgr0 -
Can anyone recommend a Google-friendly way of utilising a large number of individual yet similar domains related to one main site?
I have a client who has one main service website, on which they have local landing pages for some of the areas in which they operate. They have since purchased 20 or so domains (although in the process of acquiring more) for which the domain names are all localised versions of the service they offer. Rather than redirecting these to the main site, they wish to operate them all separately with the goal of ranking for the specific localised terms related to each of the domains. One option would be to create microsites (hosted on individual C class IPs etc) with unique, location specific content on each of the domains. Another suggestion would be to park the domains and have them pointing at the individual local landing pages on the main site, so the domains would just be a window through which to view the pages which have already been created. The client is aware of the recent EMD update which could affect the above. Of course, we would wish to go with the most Google-friendly option, so I was wondering if anyone could offer some advice about how would be best to handle this? Many thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Does having the same descrition for different products a bad thing the titles are all differnent but but they are the same product but with different designs on them does this count as duplicate content?
does having the same description for different products a bad thing the titles are all different but but they are the same product but with different designs on them does this count as duplicate content?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Casefun1 -
Competitors Developing Spammy Link For My Website
Well Guys there are lot of discussions in almost all the communities, blogs, forums about Post Penguin impact. Google says that if find that you're involved in any link building activities, we may penalize you. People out there have already started their developed links. But what if our competitors would have developed those links. Initially it was okay to develop one way links, I even developed lot of quality, but deliberately, links. around 95% links are placed manually, if return to some favor or money but all links looks natural. Most of the links I developed through content only, like articles, blog comments, PR submission, etc now really skeptical about the quality (after hearing lot of talks and reading n number of posts). Now, can I also submit my competitor's websites in 1000 topic directory (obviously not in any spammy directory), would it effect that website adversely? What if I spun an existing content and submit it into 500 article directories and give backlink to competitor site from using only one anchor text (which is obviously the main keywords - highest sales generating keyword) I look forward to some experts comments.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Khem_Raj70 -
How Google deal with a Domain Buy
Hello folks, How is google dealing with those clever peoples who decide to buy a famous place on internet( domain ), to be their domain name. For example if someone buy a very well ranked domain name for some keywords in their niche, is there any punishment? Whats the bad things about buy a domain? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | augustos0