4 of our websites which shared the same brand were penalized by google

[beckywu]

4 of our websites which shared the same brand were penalized by google in this panda (Dec 19). why?

we have many websites. One of them is the main website. and others are subsites, but they share the same company brand, logo; and part of product, content are almost the same (Not exactly the same). so, if google realized that these websites are belong to one company, and because these websites have the same content between the main website, so these subsits were penalized?

have you ever meet this problems?

[goodroi]

Welcome to Webmasterworld!

Websites that share the same brand commonly rise & fall together. This is often because the same SEO strategy was implemented by the same SEO company for each site. The same type of content, backlinks, social signals etc. were developed.

If the websites were interlinked they are even more dependent on each other. Imagine if your main site loses half of its inbound links. It will pass considerably less link juice to your other sites thus creating a domino effect. In this example it is not because the sites are interlinked that they lose rankings but rather that the sites are relying too much for ranking help from each other. So when one site takes a hit they will all take a hit.

Also when people build multiple websites they can dilute the value of their websites. Make sure to check for issues like duplicate or near duplicate content. Make sure each website provides significant & unique value.

Often when I need to develop multiple sites to better serve subsections of my customer base I will block it from the search engines to avoid duplicate content and other issues.

[tedster]

Note that Dec 19 is a date that some of our members spotted a significant update to the Google algorithm - see the thread Google Updates and SERP Changes - December 2011 [webmasterworld.com]. There is no particular reason right now to assume that it is a "Panda" update, however.

Is there some reason you feel that your ranking changes are a true penalty (something manipulative that Google wants to punish) rather than just rankings that went lower?

[HuskyPup]

Are all your sites targetting the same market using the same name extension i.e. example1.com, example2.com etc or are they aimed at different markets with different extensions say example.com, example.cn, example.eu etc?

The problem with having similar sites targetting the same market with similar extensions is that Google often cannot differentiate between them and will often devalue all of them until it decides which it wants to promote.

I sometimes have this confusion in Google.co.uk when my example.co.uk site is nowhere to be found but my example.com site is and vice versa. The sites are nowhere near similar, one has 1,600+ good, generic pages the other 50+ very in-depth techinical pages and both from 1994.

And guess what? My 50+ page site has gone missing this week! Thanks G.

[Planet13]

@ beckywu

we have many websites. One of them is the main website. and others are subsites, but they share the same company brand, logo; and part of product, content are almost the same (Not exactly the same).

So how are they DIFFERENT from one another? They sound almost identical...

If you can let us know how they differ significantly from one another, we might be able to better help.

[beckywu]

@tedster

"Is there some reason you feel that your ranking changes are a true penalty (something manipulative that Google wants to punish) rather than just rankings that went lower? "

our websites traffic down at Dec 19. you say"something manipulative", i am sure we haven't do that. because we haven't link building for a long time for some websites, but they punished by google also. the only reason we can find is they share the same brand, same product with main website. (we do seo mainly for our brand websits)

[beckywu]

So how are they DIFFERENT from one another? They sound almost identical...

If you can let us know how they differ significantly from one another, we might be able to better help.

like:
our main website(brand website) have product A,B,C,D,E,F....
our subsites: one have A,B another have C,D and others have E,F...

share part products and related content with main website.

[HuskyPup]

They do not seem different to me unless I am missing something.

Quite simply are they duplicates presented in a different way?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Imagine wikipedia broken up into 10,000 domains and ask yourself if that would be as useful to users as having all pages on one domain. I think you'll agree, and be thankful, that having them all on one site is a good thing.

The same might be true of the multiple sites pushing your one "brand". If Google feels that none of them are up to par with a competing site about the same subject they will all rise/fall together as if they were one site anyway.

I'm guessing you've got some serious interlinking going on? If not it might be time to re-brand the sites since they are not about the same products. There is rarely a good reason to create many sites when one good one will do.

[Robert Charlton]

Most of the problems with this setup have already been pointed out several times. To emphasize one that caught my attention with regard to Panda....

...content are almost the same (Not exactly the same)...

This sounds very much like one of the points posted by Amit Singhal, head of Google's ranking team, in this article....

More guidance on building high-quality sites
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
Friday, May 06, 2011
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

Amit Singhal posted some questions to provide guidance about how Google looked at ranking factors....

- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?

Note that while Singhal appears to be referring to articles within a single domain in this point, these other items from the same article suggest he's also talking about duplication between domains....

- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?

I think the phrasing of your original question suggests that you believe that Google might be concerned about ownership of the material....

...so, if google realized that these websites are belong to one company, and because these websites have the same content between the main website, so these subsits were penalized?

Google's concern is not about ownership of the duplicate material. It is about user experience, and about the best use of its system resources. Google dislikes duplicate or substantially similar material, regardless of ownership.

As to why this was caught when it was, that's hard to say. Traditionally, strong linking has often masked duplication issues, and it may well be that, on Dec 19, Google adjusted its duplication threshold, or that it made adjustments to how it valued the inbound link juice your sites were getting, or any of a number of factors.

No one factor determines rankings. That's always been true in Google, but it was easier to see that when the algorithm was less complex.

[Planet13]

...and it may well be that, on Dec 19, Google adjusted its duplication threshold, or that it made adjustments to how it valued the inbound link juice your sites were getting, or any of a number of factors.

I would suggest that those interested in possible changes to the goolge algo around December 19th might be interested in looking at this post:

[webmasterworld.com...]

As it describes a site that lost all rankings on approximately the 20th of December.