Side by side Ecomm cart testing

[lorax]

I'm working on a suped up SEO version of osCommerce and had the idea to set up a test.

I would like to build two ecomm sites - one using osComm straight out of the box and another using my version. Both would use the same content and copy (where applicable) and both would use generic, non-descript DNs.

What I'm looking for here is a way to get some sense of how well the modified version performs in the SERPs versus a straight install without any outside influences like backlinks and advertising.

I'd like to get some feedback for making this test as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible. And any pitfalls you might see in what I'm proposing. Thanks.

[dreamshop]

If you're using the same content and copy wouldn't that simply mean that only the higher ranking site will be indexed [while the other one is passed over because of the duplicate content]?

I don't know this for sure but I've read that in several places.

[TallTroll]

Be careful of dupe content filters, use some unique text in each version to mark them as different