Example.com and Examples.com

2 websites with similar URLS

[66sore]

I intend to do 2 websites...example.com and examples.com...some similar content but different keyword targets for each URL.

Is this a good or bad idea?

[ashear]

If the content is going to be completely different this won’t hurt you. Just make sure that they are registered under different owners and hosted within different hosting companies.

Google is a registrar and will easily be able to tell that you own both sites.

[66sore]

If google knows I own both but I manage to have entirely different verbiage, there's still a chance for a penalty?

I really should put the sites on different hosts (for uptime reasons), but I don't really feel like changing name registrars.

But I probably should....

[ashear]

The most important thing is to make sure that the sites have different content. Even if they know that you own both and they have different content its most likely valueable to display it.

[jimbeetle]

And, it always comes down to the reason for using two similar domains.

You used singular and plural forms as an example; if the intent is simply to catch different forms of the same keyword you might better spend time fully developing one site -- with semantically rich pages, of course -- and pointing the unused domain at it to catch typo traffic.

[66sore]

ok....it sounds like my plan will work then.......I will have 2 or 3 sites selling the same "product" but with all different keyword and keyphrase content, meta tags, body copy, etc....my goal is be google results #1, 2 and 3 for my general category......