Multiple domain names again

[SlyOldDog]

A company which produces a similar product to us has recently been populating the SERPS a lot recently with various domains. The way that they have done it raises a question for me. My first impression is that it's spam, but perhaps Google might not think so.

They are going back to the old Yahoo model that worked well in the past. They produce at least one domain for each pair of keywords they want to be found for. For example:

widets-location.com
location-widgets.com
widet-location.com
location-widet.com
etc.

In itself this will not help them much, but they are also peppering these pages, page title and incoming anchor text of links with the URL keywords. Hence they rank very well for each combination of keywords. For just 2 locations they now have 24 domains. Of course they link them together too, but in a "non aggressive" manner. Content hardly varies at all. Just the page name and meta tags are altered. The database, graphics and editorial is all the same.

It it spam? We might produce similar structures under a single URL and nobody would complain.

[jdMorgan]

SlyOldDog,

From a search user's perspective, this just clutters up the SERPs.

If for some reason I find that first location-widget listing unattractive and don't want to click on it, then I'm unlikely to want to click on the widget-location link either. So, all these listings just get in the way, and I have to scroll down to find something else more intersting to me.

So, as a searcher, I'd call it spam.

It may work for awhile, though, until someone complains to Google search quality.

JMHO,
Jim

[SlyOldDog]

That's the point though. They normally have only one or 2 pages on each set of SERPS so they don't cause much clutter. I personally find it annoying because as a whole they are dominating the SERPS with their various sites, but I doubt the Google spam department would find it very interesting because they don't clutter up any particular search too much.

[HenryUK]

I reported a company in competition with one of my sites who have been doing this along with cross-linking, keyword stuffing etc.

Indeed this particular organisation has been (rather naively, I thought) using the fact that they come up 5 or 6 times in the top 10 on certain keyphrases in their marketing...

I've forwarded a copy of their email to Google, no action so far but my attitude is report and forget - you can get bitter and twisted if you dwell on these things too much...

[The Subtle Knife]

I reported a company in competition with one of my sites who have been doing this along with cross-linking, keyword stuffing etc.
Indeed this particular organisation has been (rather naively, I thought) using the fact that they come up 5 or 6 times in the top 10 on certain keyphrases in their marketing...

I've forwarded a copy of their email to Google, no action so far but my attitude is report and forget - you can get bitter and twisted if you dwell on these things too much...

Back to the earlier thread "Search Engine Ranking Wars".

The multi-domain method, IS NOT SPAM.
The only danger is going to get people annoyed, even if it's done properly.

My conclusion was that people to coin a british phrase, will just end up "grassing each other up". QED.

[HenryUK]

Subtle

If you are defining spam as "what Google currently treats as spam", then you are probably absolutely correct.

I would argue that "playing tricks that allow a single site effectively to occupy a majority of top ten listings" ought to have a place within the definition of spam - even if Google doesn't yet see it that way...

I spend 99.9% of my time worrying about my own site, and 98% of that time worrying about the concerns of human users rather than SE, so I agree that getting drawn into a "grassing" contest ("turf war"?) is a waste of energy.

However, I think it helps Google to have concerns like this drawn to its attention. Having sent a report I shan't be repeating it or chasing up or worrying about whether action has been taken.

[SlyOldDog]

So how many domains on one topic are acceptable then, if they are all targeted at different keywords? :)