Combining Domains

[mud]

Hello everyone,

Say there is a site called Widgets.com, which i own, and i buy a site called TotalWidgets.com which serves the same type of content. Then i server both the domains off the same server, with the same ip, with the same content. Would all the links from my original site (Widgets.com), and all the links from the newly bought site (TotalWidgets.com) all go into the total PR (and total Backlinks) of the combined sites?

[Tartan75]

No. PR is based on links to the relivant individual pages, hence same ip etc wont 'share' PR between the two sites.

Also note that duplicate content leads to reduced ranking for the site that is deemed to be the duplicate.

[Lisa]

On the contrary, I believe you can combine PR from two sites, if Google combines the listings and treats the two sites as one. To do this, Setup a 302 redirect on one domain and point it to the other domain and your PR will be transferred.

[jeremy goodrich]

Hm, it would make more sense for Google to transfer based on a 301 redirect, since 302 means moved temporarily. :)

But other than that, it does make sense Google would combine the back links, etc.

[Tartan75]

Lisa & Jeremy

Maybe i have misunderstood 'mud' but my reading of his post was that he intended seting up duplicate sites, not spreading the site across two domains, but duplicating it across two domains.

Surely PR will still follow the basic rules and would depend entirely on linking, and not share on the basis that they have the same IP etc.?

Point taken re redirects, although that would be moving not copying sites, and I would assume same IP would be irrelivant to that?

[Marcia]

There's a real problem with using a 302 redirect. Both can be picked up (by more than Google) and run into duplicate content detection. It has to be a 301, then there's no problem - the search engines know for sure which is the correct domain.

I've seen where the intended domain was dropped and the one being redirected with the 302 was listed instead - at Alta Vista and FAST both, resulting in loss of position until they caught up with it when it was fixed. Google had it fixed as soon as the webmaster's error was corrected, but in the meantime they had both listed with the same content. Not good.

There were a couple of good threads on this in Webmaster General, jdMorgan was the one who nailed it.

[mud]

Well I'd be buying the new site for their users, as it is a popular site, and basically "redirecting" that site to mine, but without javascript... they would just be both set up in the httpd.conf as the same address... they'd just both point to the same IP/nameserver.

Remember, both these sites are the same type of site. I'm quite sure that google wouldn't penalize me for this because when companies merge they might do the same type of thing...

Sounds like most of you think that it would be benifitial on the google level as well though.

[Marcia]

mud, companies have to do this for a number of legitimate reasons, including type-in traffic that's lost because of confusion as to the actual domain name. Just use a 301.