The reason why I want to duplicate a site is to increase reliabilty. I don't have £xx,000 for me own SFT servers and multiple links and stuff, but I do have a spare £xx a month for a second dedicated server!
What I want to do is to keep my main www.widgets.co.uk hosted by HosertsInc., and then duplicate the site at www.widgets.com hosted by HostCorp. I think this will increase reliability because you can never tell when the server will crash, the link to HostersInc will go down etc.
www.widgets.com is currently pointed at www.widgets.co.uk (enter either and you get sent to www.widgets.co.uk at HostersInc). Last time I checked the .com is not currently indexed by the main SE's.
1) Is a dumb idea
2) Should I not worry about it - its a good idea
3) Will search engines spot a duplicate and drop the www.widgets.co.uk from their indexes
4) Should I just put a robots.txt at www.widgets.com to block all SE's so that it never gets indexed, thus avoiding duplicate infringments?
Number 3 could happen - or a competitor might report it - if the sites are completely identical.
The idea of a backup is fine, but how will your visitors get (or know to go) to the backup domain?
Jim
- Chad
I'm more interested in keeping existing subscribers happy rather than new visitors. When they subscribe, they get a welcome message. That message states that they should go to the .com if ever the .co.uk is unavailable.
>>Why not change the content up enough to avoid the dupe penalties? Might avoid the entire issue.>>
I guess I could like not duplicate the articles. The main function of the site is database searches which SE's dont index anyway. So as long as I dont duplicate the articles and homepage I think that should be fine.
a second site is never a dumb idea. an exact duplicate would probably just be a waste of time.
>>2) Should I not worry about it
depends what you're worrying about. if it's server downtime, then it's not worth worrying about too much - web hosts will want to fix the servers as quickly as possible - it's their livelihood at stake as well. if problems continue you can easily jump ship and have your site working on another server within 24 hours.
something more worrying to me is the possibility of PR0 problems with google etc. it hurts. it can happen to anyone. a second site with new content and hosted elsewhere will hopefully still be live if the first site gets the googledump.
>>3) Will search engines spot a duplicate and drop the www.widgets.co.uk from their indexes
they can spot duplicates and can drop them, but no guarantees on what they will or won't do - you just have to wait and see. create new content for the second site.
>>4) Should I just put a robots.txt at www.widgets.com to
>>block all SE's so that it never gets indexed, thus
>>avoiding duplicate infringments?
i do this with a number of sites where .com and .co.uk are identical. could use 301 redirect instead but prefer to keep them on separate servers in case of downtime. i'm slowly working my way through them all to create 2nd sites for each. it's nice being able to dominate SERPs :)
>>So as long as I dont duplicate the articles and homepage
>>I think that should be fine
write lots of new pages, optimise them for new search terms. make the second site work for you and bring you traffic just as if it was your only site.
