Hi Prashant,

Yes - any URLs that are different are different in Google's eyes, unless the modifier is a # symbol.

So if you have www.example.com/key#value12345 and www.example.com/key#valuexyzabc, then Google sees these as the same, i.e. www.example.com/key. They will ignore everything after the # character.

All other query strings, etc., mean that the URL has changed and if the pages on those URLs are the same, it's duplicate content.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Jane

Good luck!

Hi,

I doubt you will see too many SEO detriments to this, but that depends on how the site is configured re: the non-www version of the site. If you access http://domain.dk/, what happens? Are you redirected to www.domain.dk, www2.domain.dk, or does one of the two categories' content load on the non-www URL?

Google should simply treat www and www2 as different subdomains. I have not heard of ranking / indexing confusion based on using www1, www2 etc. but it's definitely the usability issue that would really bother me. Definitely good to work on convincing the client to hurry up with the complete redesign so you can get it all back on the www

Hi Tihomir,

Is there a way you can rename the subdomains? E.g., name the old design / category something like http://categoryname.domain.dk/ and have the new content on http://www.domain.dk/?

Agree with everyone else here - this is a pretty horrible strategy when done solely for SEO purposes, and usually ends up being very spammy. Most businesses don't have a broad enough catalogue to warrant multiple sites, and the benefit of having keyword-rich domain names (even, or especially exact-match domains like carinsurance.com) is negligible nowadays. Google had to crack down on this, as domain names used to be a very easy to way to rank.

Google is good at figuring out who owns which websites, so unless you are incredibly dedicated with your efforts to hide details, a network of sites like this is likely to be grouped together - Google will probably know they're all yours. Whilst that alone isn't a terrible thing (lots of businesses own more than one domain), Google has seem networks created for SEO purposes like this so many times that the view they'll take of it is dim. Something as simple as the same Local / Places / telephone information would be more than enough to make that connection.

Hi Prashant,

This sounds like removal due to duplication rather than DMCA - the omission is usually noted as being because of DMCA notices if they are the reason, e.g. http://img.labnol.org/images/2008/07/googlesearchdmcacomplaint.png

Google likely sees these as duplicates, or near-dupes, as David has said,

Hi Tihomir,

Are you planning to give the remaining category a facelift too?

It would be best to include all three categories under the same subdomain (e.g. the "www." subdomain) and place them in folders, e.g. www.domain.dk/category1, www.domain.dk/category2 and www.domain.dk/category3. www2 isn't technically damaging but it's bad from a usability point of view. It's incredibly unlikely to be remembered, for one, and even more likely to be mistyped as www.

Ha, in that case, it's pretty much every second new client you speak to!

I don't take these risks on purpose - if a link shows up on what looks like a high quality "directory" as a result of a paid posting for a client or a personal site, I won't worry too much about it but that's on a case-by-case basis. Links like that show up in the wild all the time, but I wouldn't personally seek them out. It depends on how much of a risk you're willing to take, but if you're otherwise good at link development, you don't need to take the sort of risks you see people taking when they acquire 20, 30, 40 paid directory links.

I am not sure what you mean by clients - are you asking if I have been responsible for clients being penalised? If so, no, I have not. Thanks.

William and Gary sum it up really well here - directory listings can be useful, but they should be sought for other reasons than SEO. Noah and Eduardo are also right - the safest thing to do is to acquire these links with the nofollow tag.

If you want to take a risk or two, the highest quality directories probably won't hurt you if they're followed links. Google's stance on these things is pretty hard line though, so if you're working on behalf of a larger company or client, perhaps it's best to play it safe.

Hi Robert,

The canonical tag is in place on the dynamic URL, meaning that Google is assigning that "page"'s value to the correct, static URL. As such, this shouldn't be a problem for Google. Not sure why Moz is still flagging this, but my guess is that the Moz system is not set up to disregard overly dynamic URLs when they are properly canonicalised elsewhere. The Moz system likely understands that this isn't duplicate content, however, due to the canonical tag. The dynamic URL warning is just being triggered regardless.

If all your dynamic URLs are canonicalised like this to their proper canonical, static version, you should not have a problem with Google.

Cheers,

Jane