Similar Sites On The Same Server

Site being penalised as it shares similar structure to other site

[caragh]

Hi,
I am promoting 2 sites. The first site (www.domain.ie) is doing very well on Google the second (www.domain.com) is not performing well at all. We began promoting the former several months before the latter. Both sites are very similar in terms of the layout, however there is distinct content on the homepage of each as well as on the other pages.

Do you think that this is the problem and if so are there any steps that you would suggest in terms of optimisation etc that might rectify the problem?

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks

[edited by: Marcia at 4:53 pm (utc) on May 6, 2004]
[edit reason] No specific URLs, please. [/edit]

[ThomasB]

I wouldn't worry to much right now, especially if the second site was launched between january and now.

Look for all the sandbox threads that are popping up here and in Supporters.

As long as the source and the content is somehow different (mixed up paragraphs, added some words) I wouldn't worry too much about duplicate content problems.

[CCowboy]

Do both sites have differant I.P.s?

If so, I would use differant I.P.s since they most likely share smilar content and incoming links.

[caragh]

Hi ThomasB,
Thanks for that. Could you please tell me what a sandbox thread is.
Thanks

[dirty_marra]

Caragh,

I'm not as optemistic as ThomasB (although given the fact that he's probably a lot more experienced than me, doesn't mean that I'm right)

We've found that our 2 domains rarely come up in the same search term. Our .com content is different to our .co.uk . We are hosted on the same IP, we used to link between the sites (now we just have a link from .com to .co.uk).

This has only been the case since update austin.

How would I have done it differently?

a) created a different domain
b) hosted on a seperate IP
c) changed whois info
d) changed content completely
e) created only one-way links

So thats 3 belts and 4 braces ;)

Just so you know

Marra