Will Google Penalize the Same Content on Three Different Domains?

Domains for misspellings.

[sstdesigns]

Hi guys,

I have a domain whose spelling is very difficult, so what i did was bought 3 common misspelled domains for my original domains and got my site running on them

Now, the thing is google has indexed all those domains and same data is running on all these domains, will google penalize me for running duplicate content, if so what is the standard method for dealing in such a situation, i know many people might have the same problem here, wat have u guys done about this...

[cellularnews]

If the three urls point to the same content on the same server, then google will learn this and then just blend the three sites together in its rankings.

The worry is that it will treat the "lowest" site as your main one and hence you will suffer a reduction in rankings.

[Langers]

Just do a 301 redirect from the duplicate domains to the main domain.

[willbl]

I was wondering something similar...
I have a .co.uk site and I want to make a .com site that is identical to the .co.uk site but with all prices in $ instead of £.
Will Google penalize me for this? Would it be better to use a 301 redirect to the .co.uk and set a cookie to remember which currency a user prefers?

[Wizard]

In the case of misspelled domains I would certainly use 301 from misspelled name to correct name - this would solve the problem of duplicate content penalties and would appear elegant - you write the wrong URL and it changes to right one in browser.

But positioning the content in SE for misspelled keywords would be a different and more difficult issue.

As for sites with .co.uk and .com domains with different prices, this is a bigger problem. I wonder if you marked languages of the versions properly - en-us for .com and en-gb for .co.uk - would Google show UK version in google.co.uk and US version in google.com? I don't know if Google cares for language version while deciding what result to hide with duplicate filter, perhaps it don't, but it would be great in the case, wouldn't it?

[Clint]

Hi all, this brings up another question. If you 301 one site or URL to another (A to B), do the spider-bots of SE's still see the meta tags of the site "A" or page "A" that's directed, or do they ignore it and read/index the meta tags of the final site "B" or page "B"?
Thanks.

[Langers]

For the prices you could default the currency depending on either the GEOIP info or browser language. However, it would also be advisable to provide a method to allow the user to change their currency.

[Clint]

Huh?

Ah I see. I thought you were replying to my post. ;)

[Langers]

Huh?
Ah I see. I thought you were replying to my post. ;)

Indeed :)

[Clint]

Guess I'll try this again. ;)

Hi all, this brings up another question. If you 301 one site or URL to another (A to B), do the spider-bots of SE's still see the meta tags of the site "A" or page "A" that's directed, or do they ignore it and read/index the meta tags of the final site "B" or page "B"?
Thanks.

[lammert]

If you 301 one site or URL to another (A to B), do the spider-bots of SE's still see the meta tags of the site "A" or page "A" that's directed, or do they ignore it and read/index the meta tags of the final site "B" or page "B"?

301 is a server redirect. This means that when a client (human or bot) asks for URL A, the server will return a statuscode 301 together with URL B. The info of URL A is not returned by the server. There is no way for the client to read the information on URL A when it is 301 redirected to B. So spider-bots only see the meta tags of site B.

[g1smd]

If site A is on one server, and site B is on another server then you are wasting your money on hosting. The content on site A will never be accessed. You should remove it.

Next you should dump that hosting. Finally put the redirect file (.htaccess) on the same server as the content, and point all of your domains to the same server space.

When someone next requests site A then their browser will attempt to access the content at site A, but instead the server will detect that you are attempting to access site A and send back the redirect information instead. The browser will read this redirect information and then attempt to access site B instead. The server will see that access to site B as being OK, will allow it, and will then serve the content to the browser.

Yes! The redirect file and the content can be on the same physical server. The redirect redirects you to a different domain name, but that other domain name does not actually have to be hosted in a different place to where the redirect file actually is.

[Clint]

Lambert, thanks for the info. Is there another type of redirect or some way to accomplish this (where the spiderbot will see and index both pages)?

G1smd, I was mostly concerned with webpages on the same domain.

Thanks.

[lammert]

Is there another type of redirect or some way to accomplish this (where the spiderbot will see and index both pages)?

Yes there is, but it is extremely dangerous. You can put a 302 redirect in your .htaccess file or a meta refresh in the head section of your document. In this case the search engines will index both pages, BUT some algorithm inside the search engine will decide which one will be shown in the SERPs. History has shown that for Google, this algoritm is not always doing what the webmaster intended. Please read some posts on this forum about "302 hijacking" and "canonical URLs" before you try this type of redirect. It can have disasterous results.

[Clint]

Thanks, yeah I knew about the 302 fiasco.

[StephenW]

Hey all,
I've got a quick question related to the 301-redirect discussion. My company formerly had a domain name that ranked reasonably well but switched a few years ago to a more brand-appropriate domain name, which now also ranks reasonably well. Both domain names are still owned and point to the same server without redirecting. What should happen to my company's rankings if I install a 301 redirect from the old domain name to the new one? Will the rankings tranfer over? Will they complement one another (i.e. both domains rank well, so combining them makes the final result rank better than both)? Or will Google just take the lowest of the two?

Thanks in advance for any feedback,
Stephen W.

[stuartc1]

StephenW,

I'm almost certain that the PR from will pass to the refering site - so your old domain PR should increase the PR of your new site. Although it may not be as expected... an example is if site A with PR of 5 redirects to site B with PR of 5, you might still end up with PR of 5, but most probably a stronger one. An other example is if Site A with PR of 5 redirects to site B which has 0 PR, then the chances are that site B will obtain PR of 5. A 5 redirecting to another 5 will never make the second site 10...

Anyway, the short of it all is yes, redirect your old site and the ranking will increase, but perhaps not visually (i.e. in the PR toolbar), but it should increase in strength (i.e. from a low PR5 to a stronger PR5 or PR6..)

[TinkyWinky]

What about if you have the 301 in place to point two domains to one and now want to 'undo' in order to create a site that has new content and that compliments the original.

What happens to PR then - does it then have to stand on own two feet or is there a lag whilst google works out what has happened?

[stuartc1]

Yes, the sites will have to stand on their own two feet. Although the pr will remain up untill the next update - but the pr does not belong to the stand alone site, it belongs to the site it was refering to and will be useless. After the next update it SHOULD reduce, but you never know! stranger things have happend ;)

[Rollo]

For God's sake don't put up three sites with identicle content, that would be the WORST way to handle things. Google hates duplicate content andyou would have three sites full of dupe.

A redirect would work (if it comes from your server spiders will pick up the meta tags and possibly index them), also, why not just do domain forwarding via your domain host? This works outside of the engines.