Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
These are the same between sites and also within the sites. The home pages has approximately 180 common items.
Each site provides separate sets of content on particular regions. From each of these regional pages, one can navigate with the drop down menu to another region, onto another site.
We are noticing that a regional site is ranking with one of the menu items, when it should not. It should be the site that has a full page of content about this region.
When we observe the cached page , the keyword does not appear as it is contained within the menu item. However, this is not consistant with all similar phrases.
This has me thinking.
Does Google factor menu into the duplicate content filter?
But why would an irrelevant website with the keyword contained in the navigation drop down, rank higher than the site with content on it. This looks like Google's algo hasn't calculated the right site , even with a penalty filter in place.
Has the navigation content confused Google?
[edited by: Whitey at 10:25 am (utc) on July 3, 2008]
Google works to eliminate the template and menu from the equation before they calculate duplicate and near-duplicate content to be flagged and filtered
I agree with this, although I think there's more possibility of problems if the duplicated HTML is cross-domain.
why would an irrelevant website with the keyword contained in the navigation drop down, rank higher than the site with content on it
It sounds like there's an issue with the site containing the more relevant content - it's being pushed down in results for one reason or another.
if the menu items show in the description snippet of the result
The snippet is taken from all of the indexable text on the page - including drop down menu items. when you search for a keyword that is (only?) contained within the menu items, they'll show in the snippet.
First the menu's , now this :
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3687429.htm.... another ad-hoc observation .... weird.
On results from google.co.uk [ filtered with "sites in UK" ] we are showing both our .COM and .co.uk site in positions 45 and 46 for the same term.Neither site is hosted in the UK or has any Whois information for the UK. The only relationship with the UK is the TLD of the 2nd one.
They also have different content.
Is there a Google UK glitch on at the moment ?
I'm not sure if it's exposing some weaknesses or ways in which the algo works in calculating penalties and content preferences.
I agree with this, although I think there's more possibility of problems if the duplicated HTML is cross-domain
We took a lot of care to make sure the body content was different and are familiar with the dangers of linking similar or duplicate content. But had no idea that common navigation could be an issue.
Our site's cross link. Is this what you mean ?
[edited by: Whitey at 3:50 am (utc) on July 4, 2008]
So a new domain, different host and new fresh content (product descriptions) home page text, new titles and meta descriptions and currency/price changes and so on.
Threw some bang on topic home page links to the new domain and waited to be indexed. 30% of pages after a few days and stayed like that for a month, something was obviously not right. Title for home page was not showing in serps not even in quotes, my assumption then was a filter not a penalty but a filter, but what?
I looked again at the template and thought to myself the only thing it can be is the navigation links, around 50 of them. So i made a list of the nav text links and one by one changed the words to something similar that meant the same to the user.
Result after 1 week, full 100% pages indexed and title showing in serps with our without quotes, coincidental? I very much doubt it.
Its to early to compare results for serps as the domain is to new. Im pointing out early indications that something was not right with the 2 same templates and navigation links.
You could argue that templates are readily sold across the WWW and nav links haven't been a issue for many. Most people who buy these templates will edit the navigation to their own preferences anyway. My custom template has 50 nav links, maybe those 50 words in the exact same position throughout both sites was enough to filter one of them. It certainly looks that way.
Our site's cross link. Is this what you mean ?
I wasn't referring to linking at all, but that's another factor worth considering. Your problems may be entirely unrelated to duplicate content, however when troubleshooting any ranking issue it's worthwhile looking at features on your site that are not present on those sites not experiencing similar problems.
So, if the ideal is to have two sites with totally different content, different html and a unique link profile, consider ways in which your site differs.
Of course, there are good factors about sites as well as bad ones - the closer you fit Google's model of a highly relevant page, the less likely a url or site is going to run into trouble with (what can often be) technical problems.
By cross-domain duplication, I meant having the same HTML duplicated across one site is pretty much standard behaviour, whereas having the same HTML across multiple distinct sites is a much less frequent occurrence: it's not a problem, but a factor to consider.
