Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
History
We've got two sites:
mysite.co.uk and mysite.com
The original site was .co.uk (1999), .com was originally a test bed for a site redesign (2003) that we realised was bringing in traffic. We ended up running both in parrallel and have recently redesigned .co.uk (2004) (.co.uk now has a lot more pages and much more functionality with no black hat seo that we're aware of)
Both are hosted on same IP C class range.
Google seems to have recognised that they are related
We acknowledge that in parts they are pretty much duplicate sites (site design is different, many pages are paraphrased. however, .co.uk does have a lot more pages and functionality than .com)
The dilema
this is an edited e-mail recently sent to our web guy from our MD. Any edits or explanations are given <edit> tags.
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<start>
I've just been checking the the .co.uk stats and i've noticed a rather alarming problem....we're loosing hits from google.
It was up at around <edit>100-110</edit> per week about 2-3 weeks ago and now its around <edit>70-80*<edit>.
This seems to be too much of a drop just for seasonal difference.
I have also noticed that in the same time frame that hits on .com have gone up from <edit>25 to 35*<edit>.
(*numbers edited to show relitive values)
I think that although there might be a natural reduction in number on .co.uk we are also suffering from a loss of google ranking that seems to have been transferred to .com. (maybe due to Brandy)
As .com is effectively a retired site that doesn't get many equieries (especially not ones that make us any money). The question is: do we bite the bullet and delete the site using 302 redirects (or whatever) to .co.uk?
Reasons for the move:
1) .co.uk may replace .com's position in the rankings for terms like <edit>"blue widget ideas"<edit>
2) any duplicate site filters being applied that might be pulling .co.uk down may be lifted and .co.uk could become more "powerful"
3) we don't leave our self as open to future algo tweaks
4) it's a good time of year to try the more risky stuff like this <edit>industry quiet time</edit>
5) .co.uk's ranking might improve in Y! and MSN
6) Staff can fully concentrate on pushing .co.uk
7) it will allow us to change the "title" tag on individual products to something more relevant on .co.uk as there won't be any potential duplicate filters to worry about
8) .com was only supposed to be temporary anyway
Reasons against the move:
1) It might totally <edit>kill</edit> all remainding sites
2) the 302 might be seen as some sort of underhand tactic and .co.uk might suffer
3) .co.uk might not be advantaged by doing it and effectively we've thrown away visitors
4) we loose a bit of diversity. i.e if .co.uk goes down we won't have the .com life raft....in other words we're putting all our eggs in one basket.
Other factors to be taken in to consideration:
1) We are going to have to move servers (and therefore IP address soon). I will probably use this opportunity to have a unique IP assigned to .co.uk.
the effect of this might be
a) the IP change kills all sites because of the number of moves recently
b) the IP seperation means that all the sites are treated as seperate sites again and they all start ranking better as a result ----> this is not necessarily a good thing as it could lead to our sites doing a bit too well e.g. like <edit>"competitor1" and "competitor1's 2nd site"</edit> which will probably attract future penalties.
Half measures
Obviously we could go balls out and do the whole thing 100% or we could follow a less drastic plan.
1) we find a couple of search terms that rank well for .com but that surpresses .co.uk.
2) we delete one of the pages that .com does well on and see what happens to the the equivalent .co.uk page in the serps....based on what happens here :
3) we delete the other page on .com and use a 302 redirect* (or whatever) and see what happens to the equivalnet .com page...based on what happens here:
4) we roll out the whole site either in increments or all at once.
*the down side to this is that for the 1st time we're officially stating that .com is owned/linked to .co.uk this could be all the evidence needed to further trip some filters - maybe.
Have a read and a long think....plus maybe we should ask the WW community.
<finish>
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If you've got this far then thankyou for reading my post.
The main question is: what would you do? Any comments would be greatfully received
Thanks a lot
Marra
Don't worry about the IP address changes - make them as you need to.
based on your advice and that of others I think we're going to go for the 301 option.
Incidentally we tried de-optimising the .com site and the .co.uk has flown up the SERPs. The two sites pretty much swapped places...ONLY...the .co.uk seems to have come in higher than where .com used to be.....lets hope it sticks once the 301's are in place
cheers
marra
On the contrary I would keep both sites. There are two issues at stake here:
1. duplicate content penalties: Google does not like sites having the same content.
2. Google's algorithm has become much more erratic in the last year. Each update, many people whose sites have been around for years ranking well for their particular industry's keywords have suddenly found that their site has a dramatic loss of traffic when Google has a new update, after it changes its algorithm.
If you get rid of one website by forwarding it on to the other, you will be completely at the mercy of Google's algorithm. If the one remaining site plummets after an update, your online customers will plummet.
But if you have more than one site, as you currently do, when there is an algorithm change one site may go down but another may well go up. This is in fact what you say happended to the two sites in the last update. To get rid of the secondary site which is clawing back some of the traffic taken from the first is madness.
In a sense it's like investing in several different shares so that you spread the risk. The only hitch is you need to make sure that the content is substantially different on both sites so that one or both is not penalised for duplicate content.
In conclusion I would keep the second website [and change it to make it substantially different to the first] and I would even consider setting up some more related sites.
