3 websites, same owner, ranking on the 1st page. Is this okay?

[EmptyRoom]

Is Google okay with this? Do they penalize (manually or automatically) something like this?

Of course, the domains are on different IPs. Private WHOIS data. The only thing that really connects them is that they share the same AdSense ID.

[goodroi]

Yes, Google is fine with multiple websites owned by the same person. Google actually owns multiple websites in the same industry (for example google.com/videos & youtube.com, or orkut.com & plus.google.com)

Google wants to see a good experience for their users. If someone searches on Google and gets bad results they stop using Google. As long as the websites each provide their own value, there is no problem.

Is it possible that sometimes the multiple sites will be spam? Yes and those sites run a higher risk of being penalized. They aren't being penalized for being owned by the same company. They are being penalized for not providing value/good experience for searchers.

[EmptyRoom]

goodroi, thank you for your explanation. That is very logical and that's the way it's supposed to be. However, is there a chance that Google algorithm negatively treats websites which have the same owner (just because of the fact that they are owned by the same person)? I am of course talking about quality websites that are different (but on the same topic) and provide quality content.

[JesterMagic]

If they are trying to trick the algo then Google wouldn't be okay with this. The problem is they are not very good at detecting this.

In my niche for some of the more popular keywords one guy has 5 sites (he has about 12 sites in total) listed within the first 15 results. The sites use the exact same wordpress template but has rewritten content that sounds like a cheesy infomercial. The domains are all EMD's with either the same keywords switched around or with dashes between the words. Some share the same server, some are UK based.

The thing is if you just drill down one level of backlinks they are all linked to about 10 different fake blogs that interconnect with each other with posts that for the most part do not make sense.

This is a case of were someone is trying to spam the search results.

[JS_Harris]

The problem with owning multiple sites on the same subject and having them rank 1-2-3 is that your links between these sites will be heavily scrutinized and all may fall at once. Human raters may also be put off if they find the flavor of all three sites to be overly similar.

Remember, human raters don't just evaluate individual sites, they also evaluate search results pages.

[EmptyRoom]

JS_Harris: All three sites have completely different inbound links (and are not interlinked between them). And they are completely different -- design-wise and content-wise. They share the same keywords, of course.

[oliondor]

Of course, Google already put its nose in so many things that are not its business, so at least we can own several websites with similar (but not copied) content.

[helenp]

This Matt Cutt said about it 6 days ago:
[searchengineland.com...]

This is a very big problem for me, one authority travelsite is growing and growing. Have 20 different domains in the travelindustry, and at least the biggest of them links to the other 19, they keep buying and buying, and there are other smaller doing the same.

Maybe its ok for google but I dont think a big company can own the market, the only reason to have 20 domains is to make sure they are always on top in google, and for me that is a sort of spam.

[JesterMagic]

I have to agree. If you have multiple websites in the same niche, the only reason a person would do this is to achieve greater coverage in Google.

[reseller]

@JesterMagic

In my niche for some of the more popular keywords one guy has 5 sites (he has about 12 sites in total) listed within the first 15 results. The sites use the exact same wordpress template but has rewritten content that sounds like a cheesy infomercial. The domains are all EMD's with either the same keywords switched around or with dashes between the words. Some share the same server, some are UK based.

The case you mentioned is similar to what we have been discussing on the other thread about "Multiple Domains Crowding spam" [webmasterworld.com...]

"Multiple Domains Crowding Spam: Its a specific spam technique to own more than one top position on first page of Google SERPs for the same search term by several different domains you own or lease."

As I mentioned in the said thread, it shouldn't be that difficult for Google to identify Multiple Domains Crowding spammers and penalize them too. Because those spammers are killing diversity and competition especially on Google Top 10 search results.