Duplicate Content

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Duplicate Content

Branded Sites and Duplicate Penalties

treylane

5:52 pm on Jun 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

We've got a main website, and then about 30 "branded" versions of the site on their own sub domains - these branded sites are the same as our main site, but with different banners across the top.

For the moment (paranoid about getting banned or ortherwise penalized for duplicate content) we've added a <meta NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"> tag to the <HEAD> section of all the subdomains/branded sites.

Is there any (acceptable) way of using the links to our branded sites to add to the main site's PR? I was thinking we could redirect googlebot and/or other bots to our main site if it tries to visit the subdomains, but I don't expect that's appropriate. At the very least, is there a way to allow spiders to crawl the subdomains without duplicate content penalties?

treylane

11:36 pm on Jun 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

I've been looking at our options, and here's what I've come up with so far to try to get our branded sites to help our main site. These branded sites are part of a BIG and IMPORTANT partnership with a well respected company. The branded sites just have our partner's navbar at the top so that people who browse their sites and click on the "widgets" tab won't get stuck on our site.

Main options:
1) Remove noindex/noarchive tag from branded sites and
include a link in the footer to the main site.
Pros: Simple, easy, legitimate.
Cons: Likely duplicate content penalty.

2) Redirect spiders to the main site when they
try to visit the subdomains.
Pros: Fairly comprehensive solution, covers most SE's.
Cons: Could be considered a spam tactic, risk PR0

3) Leave the branded sites as they are.
Pros: 100% kosher, no risk.
Cons: We could really use the extra PR.

4) Use frames, navbar in top frame, our site in bottom frame.
Pros: Sounds fully legitimate, simple to implement.
Cons: Looks slightly different, don't know how spiders will handle it.

I *CAN*NOT* risk being banned/penalized/etc, and I don't even WANT to try to "cheat" google in any way so I'm leaning towards option #4 at this point.
Recommendations? Other options/suggestions?

metagod

12:47 am on Jun 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

I doubt you would be penalized for using duplicate content, since if yahoo has an interesting article and i put it on my website then will they penalize me? no!

mack

1:06 am on Jun 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

"I doubt you would be penalized for using duplicate content, since if yahoo has an interesting article and i put it on my website then will they penalize me? no!"

This example is for an articlem not an entire site. Having miltiple clone sites on subdomains coudl very well trip the dup filter trap. If I was you I woudl set about offering diferent content for each sub domain but keep the sites suitable for their use.

Maybee if you give a bit more information about why you need 30 branded sites we might be able to help you out more.

Mack.

treylane

3:58 pm on Jun 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

We have a partnership with a large news network, which has websites/tv stations/etc in a ton of cities. About 30 of these sites have agreed to include a link to our site in their navigation bar (which makes us VERY happy) so long as we keep their navbar available to users who click on that link (which seems like a reasonable request.) We decided to use subdomains to determine which navbar to display, but this could be changed fairly easily to some other scheme, such as:

[ourwebsite.com...]
(or whatever else winds up sounding like a good idea...)

It's just that this presents all sorts of SE problems/questions/etc. :(

We just don't have the resources right now to build enough custom content for each sub-site to avoid duplicate traps (and I'd prefer not to force google to crawl all these duplicate sites anyway)