Multiple sites, same content - optimise them all?

[charon]

Hi all

I've come across an interesting google issue that in *theory* shouldn't exist but it does.

A client has pointed out that a competitor of theirs has several sites with the same content but diff. URls eg: mybusiness.com, .co.uk, .biz etc etc. Most of these sites are coming up for the same search terms so they're basically hogging the top 10 and it's all from the same company. And each site has the same content - the only difference between them is the URL.

Now according to the rules, this shouldn't happen right? So how come it has, and what would you do about it?

The reason I ask is my client would like us to optimise each of their sites too, and we've said that's not the way to go, because it goes against Google's spamdexing rules.

But hey, I've been proved wrong before, so what do you folks think?

Cheers
Charon

[plasma]

Report it as spam, and tell your customer NEVER NEVER NEVER to do the same abuse.

That's the way you can improve google and sleep well at night, not always thinking of being punished by google.

just my 2 (euro-)cents :)

[cwebb]

Mentioning WebmasterWorld and GoogleGuy in the spam report is said to help!

But I don't see the real bad thing, except that they should possibly use redirects to get the domains merged in the results...