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
-
To buy or not to buy? Domains with history..
I am involved in setting up a new business which as of yet is to decide on a brand name.. As the availability of domain name in local tld (and ideally .com) is of so much importance, the brand naming process is inextricably linked to this. Therefore, upon finding a suggested name was available to register (without premium) there was a degree of satisfaction. However on looking at archive.org it was discovered that the .co.uk had been a sex/marital aid store back in 2004 and more recently in 2014 a travel blog / affiliate. Q is; Is the past history of what is a site with possible black hat links a reason to avoid registration? Or, does time cure all? And, is there a way in which domain health can be reliably confirmed? Thanks in advance for your input..
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Dfferent domains on same ip address ranking for the same keywords, is it possible?
Hello, I want to ask if two domains which r hosted on the same server and have the same ip ( usually happens with shared hosts ) tries to rank for the same keywords in google, does the same ip affects them or not.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RizwanAkbar0 -
Best practice to preserve the link juice to internal pages from expired domain?
This question relates to setting up an expired domain, that already has quality links, including deep links to internal pages. Since the new site structure will be different, what's the best practice to preserve the link juice to these internal pages? Export all the internal pages linked to using majestic Seo/ ahrefs etc, and set these pages previously linked to? Or 301 redirect these pages to home page? I heard there's a Wordpress plugin that 301 redirects all the 404 errors successfully preserving all the potential link juice.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adorninvitations0 -
I am launching an international site. what is the best domain strategy
Hi Guys, I am launching a site across the US, UK and UAE. Do I go **test.com/uk test.com/us test.com/UAE -- **or do I go us.Test.com UAe.test.com us.test.com? Which is best for SEO?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed1 -
Would it be a good idea to duplicate a website?
Hello, here is the situation: let's say we have a website www.company1.com which is 1 of 3 main online stores catering to a specific market. In an attempt to capture a larger market share, we are considering opening a second website, say www.company2.com. Both these websites have a different URL, but offer the same products for sale to the same clientele. With this second website, the theory is instead of operating 1 of 3 stores, we now operate 2 of 4. We see 2 ways of doing this: we launch www.company2.com as a copy of www.company1.com. we launch www.company2.com as a completely different website. The problem I see with either of these approaches is duplicate content. I think the duplicate content issue would be even more or a problem with the first approach where the entire site is mostly a duplicate. With the second approach, I think the duplicate content issue can be worked around by having completely different product pages and overall website structure. Do you think either of these approaches could result in penalties by the search engines? Furthermore, we all know that higher ranking/increased traffic can be achieved though high quality unique content, social media presence, on-going link-building and so on. Now assuming we have a fixed amount of manpower to provide for these tasks; do you think we have better odds of increasing our overall traffic by sharing the manpower on 2 websites, or putting it all behind a single one? Thanks for your help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | yacpro130 -
I think competitors are trying to remove my links! Have you ever seen this?
Here is the email my sales rep received today (what can we do to combat this?): From: Jaqueline carol [mailto:jaqueline-carol@hotmail.com]
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 12:57 AM
To:
Subject: I NEED your help - PLEASE Hi, Due to the latest GoogIe update we are working on cleaning up the links to our website . There fore we would like to kindly ask you to remove our link from your page. link details: URL: We believe that it would help both sides to rank up higher in Google and not get penalized during the future Google updates.
Please remove my link at the earliest and notify me about the same. Thank you for your cooperation. Best Regards, Jaquelinecarol1 -
Huge diifference linking root domains in SEO MOZ and opensite explorer
Hi there, I have fairly large site that has never really been optimised. I think an old forum i hosted has either been spammed or my webmaster at the time used some black hat techniques to get me more root linking domains. I am a newbie and would really appreciate if someone could just quickly look at my donain and confirm that this is a problem and something i should fix before i start my SEO campaign. I am also worried this will negatively effect my domain authority. I dont really want to broadcast my domain so if anyoone would be so kind to confirm the problem so i cant start to research the answer. Thanks v much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | nimble0 -
Why doesn't Google find different domains - same content?
I have been slowly working to remove near duplicate content from my own website for different locals. Google seems to be doing noting to combat the duplicate content of one of my competitors showing up all over southern California. For Example: Your Local #1 Rancho Bernardo Pest Control Experts | 858-352 ... <cite>www.pestcontrolranchobernardo.com/</cite>CachedYou +1'd this publicly. UndoPest Control Rancho Bernardo Pros specializes in the eradication of all household pests including ants, roaches, etc. Call Today @ 858-352-7728. Your Local #1 Oceanside Pest Control Experts | 760-486-2807 ... <cite>www.pestcontrol-oceanside.info/</cite>CachedYou +1'd this publicly. UndoPest Control Oceanside Pros specializes in the eradication of all household pests including ants, roaches, etc. Call Today @ 760-486-2807. The competitor is getting high page 1 listing for massively duplicated content across web domains. Will Google find this black hat workmanship? Meanwhile, he's sucking up my business. Do the results of the competitor's success also speak to the possibility that Google does in fact rank based on the name of the url - something that gets debated all the time? Thanks for your insights. Gerry
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GerryWeitz0