Are Multi-Domains EVERYTIME penalised?

Will every site that has more than one domain name be penalised?

[Schabroenkel]

Hi there (an hi GG),

after reading very many pages in these forums, I'm happy to know much more about google than I ever wanted to know ;) - but one question remains.

I've got a site with very many pages (about 15,000 are indexed), and I'm very often #1 on the SERPs, often I'm 1 and 2, and sometimes I'm 1 to 4.

Now I've read that sites with different domain names but the same content are penalised. Despite I recognized that my PR will raise from 3 to 6 with the next update for one of those sites, I'm afraid of being penalised.

Why I have more than one domain name? Very simple: I started with a name, and as time went by, I got the opportunity to buy better names. Now the site has got 5 possible addresses with nearly the same content (even the title is different because the domain name is mentioned in the title and in H1).

Now, this is the question: Do I have to expext to be penalised for this? Or is this okay?

Thanks,
Martin.

[europeforvisitors]

Are Multi-Domains EVERYTIME penalised?

No. For proof, see:

About.com = PR8
Miningco.com = PR8
tqn.com = PR8

Same site. Same content. No penalties.

[pixel_juice]

europeforvisitors, if you search for Miningco.com Google actually returns about.com (mouseover the link to see what I mean). It treats them as the same domain. Schabroenkel seems to be saying that there are 5 slightly different sites with very similar content.

I don't know about penalties, but you can expect Google to eventually whittle you down to a single domain. If they are slightly different, I would consider redirecting all the extra names to your best one.

[Schabroenkel]

> If they are slightly different, I would consider redirecting all the extra names to your best one.

As I mentioned, the pages are completely the same, they got merely different TITLEs and H1.

One part of the pages has to keep the not-best-domain because of different reasons - e.g. listed in AvantGo and to simply keep my PDA channel off my log analysis.

Martin.

[jonrichd]

Schabroenkel

I would think that you may be risking a problem with substantially similar content on different domains.

What about taking the domain that you use for AvantGo, and updating your robots.txt so that it isn't spidered by the search engines.

If the other domains are just there because you were able to get them, consider using a 301 redirect to have them all funnel into one of the domains. That way, all your PR will be concentrated into that domain, but people who have bookmarked your other names will still be able to get to you.

By the way, Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

[Schabroenkel]

What about taking the domain that you use for AvantGo, and updating your robots.txt so that it isn't spidered by the search engines.

I'm afraid this will not be easy with only one document root...