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I have been working on designing a site for a customer where he wants two different domains, 1 for each of two very closely related, but, different topics. This setup is something I would have done without thinking and NOT to try to achieve higher rankings, before I even heard the terms link popularity, or PR, but, just because it seems to make sense, and well its the customer's thought process too.
An example (purely fictional) might be a baseball card site which has tons of info about baseball cards. And, a site with extensive information about basebally players. Lets say there was a page about a particular player on the baseball player site, and that particular player has a baseball card that the other page has info about..there would be a link to that card's page. (I know barely anything about baseball and even less about collecting baseball cards..i'm reaching here..) And in some cases the opposite would be true. A page with information about a famous card may have a link to that players bio or whatever is on the player site.
Sure you could say to just make the card section a part of the player site..but.. they're really two distinct themed sites. One about players, one about cards. I've seen plenty of these types of mini networks of sites where they are definitely interlinked, but, each site could stand on its own and does not duplicate any content from the other.
Anyway, is this just a recipe for disaster as far as the big G is concerned? Is only 2 sites with a lot of interlinking potentially a Bad Thing?
It would be nice that anyone whose really interested in "card collecting" would be able to find the nice card collecting site, and anyone researching players could find the players site, but, if it risks a penalty I may push to just pick one of the domains and try to figure how to structure it so a visitor can find his way to whatever he was looking for easily.
This example is probably a poor one, but I couldn't think of a better one off hand. :(
[edit]
A better example may be the relationship between Amazon and the IMDB. Look up a movie on imdb, get a link to amazon to buy it. Look up a movie on Amazon, well there are links back to IMDB around. The big difference of course is that IMDB existed on its own waaay before Amazon bought it, and has a bazillion and one incoming links (similar situation for amazon). Also the links to Amazon from imdb arent direct, they're some kind of funky redirects. [I hope its OK to post the names of these sites since they're very well known - I see people post references to CNN and NASA all the time- if not, I apologize, please remove this paragraph]
[edited by: savvy1 at 1:09 am (utc) on Sep. 20, 2002]
I think that biggest point of frustration with pagerank is that there is not always a clear distinction between a Spammer (no mercy for the evil incarnate) and a Webmaster. What's the real difference between spamming and SEO? It seems to me that in many cases the distinction lies in whether the search engine penalizes you for it. I put off SEO for a long time and then when I tried to do it, I got off totally on the wrong foot. Now I have a clearer understanding of the pagerank system and am going to adjust my strategies, but I have to admit a growing feeling of fear and resentment toward Google, especially after finding out how easy it can be to get permanently blacklisted. I even removed links to some "Top 25" sites I had swapped links with in hopes of getting some extra traffic, in case maybe I could be penalized just for linking to them.
On the one hand, I am relieved to know that I no longer need to bother wasting my time on extra sites to promote my own. On the other hand I feel much less free to develop websites as I want, knowing that there is a vengeful dark side to this search engine, and IT NEVER FORGIVES.
Now you see...your example I would personally think of as possible spam. :) But why? What differentiates it from mine? Is it only because I'm biased and it is, well, my example? Maybe.... :(
However the multiple domains pointing to one site thing I don't consider spam at all, and it's too bad that Google penalizes for that. There are numerous completely valid reasons for wanting to do it. Then again, there are numerous valid reasons for wanting to make networks of highly interconnected sites with shared content. I was very surprised to learn how many commonplace web practices, which are not generally thought of as "spam", are penalized by google. I do understand that it's necessary to keep link farms out, but it can be very aggravating to see that some people are having their sites permanently blacklisted for relatively benign activities, while others gain top rankings with unsavory practices. My attempts to build extra sites were the result of discovering that competing sites were gaining first-page rankings just by having a couple extra domains with H1 links pointing their way. I figured it would at least be a fun experiment, what's the harm, etc. and I wanted some extra places to put content that just wouldn't fit in with the structure of the main site.
But anyway back to the real issue of this post: I'm also curious about whether multiple domain pointers is a bad thing in the eyes of google. I decided that the best thing to do with mine, since I already other sites linking to them, would be to set up a javascript redirect. I'm not sure if the googlebot can parse them yet but it seems unlikely. Hopefully it should at least work until I have no more need for redirects from the domains.
However the multiple domains pointing to one site thing I don't consider spam at all, and it's too bad that Google penalizes for that.
That said, seems like I've been reading here lately that Google has been getting better about merging multiple domains into one when they all point at the same IP/same content, but it seems that client side redirects (js, etc) may be A Bad Thing.. where a 301 (or 302?) or just pointing at the same IP and site MAY be OK. But I advise anyone to not put any faith in anything I say because I am just starting to try to learn all this stuff :) I hope someone who knows more can hop in with some opinions. :)
BTW..
But anyway back to the real issue of this post: I'm also curious about whether multiple domain pointers is a bad thing in the eyes of google.
I know I'll have to watch like a hawk, because for sure they'll interlink much too much. They warrant different sites, but we'll have to keep any linking between the two to a bare miniumum - there's no need to, anyway.
There have been a lot of discussions on linking between multiple sites. Here's one good one that gets into having two sites, plus the concept of hubs and spokes that's very interesting:
[webmasterworld.com...]
I run two successful ecom sites in two separate categories. Both with different product ranges, content etc. They link to each other via the "resources" section where I trade links with other sites.
However despite there being scope for cross selling between the sites, I am reluctant to add any links to complementary products cross site. For fear of the cross linking penalty.
A solution round this would be to put every single product (from both sites) on each site so that I am cross selling internally. However this makes me worried about having too much duplicate content across my sites.
The phrase "Rock and a hard place" springs to mind.
I am relatively new to this forum, but the more I read, the more scared I get to do anything to my sites. I am finding SEO knowledge (& its many grey areas) a barrier not just to innovation but to web development.
so the minute SEs can read js links ... i am paranoid that i will be banned.
i keep saying to myself "if i aint broke dont fix it" but at the same time i want to improve my sites to increase sales by providing better customer experience.
I think i am a posterchild for:
"risk averse, In A Constant State of Fear"
www.webmasterworld.com/forum10/1244.htm
"Feel free to exchange links with other sites that are compatible with your site's content and users' interests."
I think there is a lot of paranoia around about spam linking. Google's algos would have to be immensely complex to separate the wheat from the chaff.
If you have lots of links from unrelated sites (link farms etc) then you should perhaps be worried. If, however, the sites you are linking have content similar to the other, where is the problem? Google wants you to link!
Google wants good, related search results ... end of story.
:)
