Damage My Google Rankings?

Did my wife do me in......?

[WCandle]

I started an online business years ago selling widgets. I've been fortunate that the demand locally has grown enough that I opened a retail store selling both widgets and thingamijigs. Every thing sounds great, right? Here's my problem/concern:

I would like to publish a website for my store, not only talking about the store and services we offer, but also selling both widgets and thingamijigs. However, Google has now associated my retail store with my previously existing website (turns out my wife placed a blurb on the site announcing the opening of the store). I've removed her announcement, but when you query Google by my store name, the existing site comes up. I'm afraid that by publishing a completely different site for my store, I may damage the rankings of my existing site. Is this something I need to be worried about?

[Bewenched]

Just by talking about the store would not cause google to view them the same. Now if you had both websites pointing to the same IP address on the same server then you might run into problems.

Why would you want two websites for the same store anyway. An older domain will always out perform and generally out rank a brand new one.

[colin_h]

My advice would be to publish the new site and join Google Sitemaps. Their specialist tools will help you smooth out any wrinkles along the way and eventually you will have a good honest site that will get listed properly. It is pointless to sit and theorise about what Google might do ... jump in and test the water, it won't be as hot as you think.

All the Best

Col :-)

[SuddenlySara]

If you were able to start a retail store based on a website selling widgets then by all means don't worry about having 2 sites up. Put up some articles on your original site about how your business grew and give some discounts in your retail store to persons willing to fill out a testimonial that you post online. Make and grow each site as original. You do still run your original online widget store don't you?

[WCandle]

Thanks for the help, everyone.

I really don't want two sites for the same store. I'd like the original site to be completely independent, selling different products (with some overlap) than I sell in the store. I'd basically treat it as a separate business. The second site, I'd like to be a reflection of the store - talking about who we are, what we do, and selling some of the products that can be found there.

My intention is not to have duplicate sites, but my worry was that since Google already thought the first site was my store's site, it would think I have two sites for the same store and therefore penalize my original site's ranking.

[Adam_Lasnik]

If you're going to have multiple sites, focus on *unique* content on each.

Google may have a good memory, but (okay, I'm anthropomorphizing a bit here) it also has a flexible brain. :)

[bb_paul]

i would say google is only returning your old site because that is the best result it can find currently....

if a new website was launched, within time, this would become a much more relevant result to the query (many pages and a lot more content, as opposed to a few paragraphs) and therefore easily out perform your old site.

there may be quite a few peripheral issues that could affect you, as mentioned by others, but i think you'd be absolutely fine.

[JudgeJeffries]

sandboxed and non-sandboxed?
When where the domains registered?