Duplicate content on different domains

Is the penalty selective?

[wooden]

There are some Web sites of major corporations with duplicate content on multiple domains (no redirects, no robots.txt files disallowing spiders) that have escaped the infamous Google duplicate content penalty and continue to thrive in the search results for competitive search terms.

Does anyone have insight as to why some such sites have not had the Google-hatchet fall across their duplicate content on multiple domains? Are major corporations somehow exempt? Does Google(bot) just look the other way in some cases?

[mrguy]

Sometimes the filters miss them.

Report them with a spam report to draw attention to them.

[wooden]

I don't have anything against such sites/companies . . . just wondering if it's a matter of their duplicate content slipping past the filters or if there is a human element at work allowing things to "slip past the filters" because the sites belong to big dogs.

[Susanne]

Maybe those companies have huge amounts of incoming links so Google knows that they are "important" sites. Hopefully Google is able to figure out that such big companies don't NEED to have duplicate content to boost their ranking. They boost it with their incoming links anyway so the risk involved in having duplicate content is diminished. Maybe?

[Alternative Future]

But what exactly are different domains? I have a few domains all pointing to the same site (same content) with the ext *.info *.biz *.net blah blah and made a query about this to which I had a reply of not classed as spam!

Might be best we are clear on what is meant by different domains first i.e. different IP's or the likes!

-gs

[wooden]

Good point, AF. One site in question has the same IP for (fictitious names) ilovecompanyx.com and companyx.com, with the same content appearing at both names. Are you saying different domain names serving duplicate content at the same IP will not be regarded as spam?

[Alternative Future]

What I have heard is that the UA bot can pick up on the different domains and only use one! (it omits the others)
It is also supposed to dump the least relevant ones and only display the best one i.e. the one with most backlinks etc.
In the case of Inktomi though I have to disagree as I am currently listed #2 for a search term that I have #1 slots in all other SE's due to the fact that it is not using my primary domain, I have contacted the relevant people regarding this and awaiting a reply.

As for your question:

Are you saying different domain names serving duplicate content at the same IP will not be regarded as spam?

In some cases yeah! (am sure someone will have other reasons on how it should be) but was it not a marketing thing to buy all domains/TLD's with each ext at their release, that were the same as your main *.com?

-gs

[Susanne]

One site in question has the same IP for (fictitious names) ilovecompanyx.com and companyx.com, with the same content appearing at both names.

Could it be that one URL is the actual site, while the other URL is simply parked and pointing at the first one? Check whether both URLs have indexed pages in search engines.
Example: I take care of a site with one primary URL that has all the content. However, we also have nearly 10 URLs parked for "protection" of our company name and pointing to out primary site. Naturally none of those URLs have any content of course.

[wooden]

Yep, both domains show up in the same sets of top ten search results. ilovecompanyx.com might be number 3, and companyx.com might be number 4 for the same query.

[Susanne]

OK, got it. I refer back to my earlier post about them possibly having many incoming links and therefore might avoid penalty. Something else which might be of advantage for them is if they avoid crosslinking between the two URLs. Or like mrguy said, they just slipped through the filters somehow.