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Site 1: Sells black, red, white, blue, green, yellow widgets and widget accessories.
Site 2: Sells only black widgets and widget accessories.
Site 3: Sells only red widgets and widget accessories.
Is this considered spam (duplicate content?) Sites 2 and 3 have a little more information about Black and Red widgets than the main site.
I'd like it if I can get an answer from GoogleGuy as to what is considered spamming.
genuine question not being facitious
If you really want to do this a more effective way - where at some future time you don't get banned from google - sell all products on the primary site.
site #1. sell products, review of products and comparative shopping highlight your unique selling points over competitive products, troubleshooting and FAQs.
Site #2. informative history of widgets, include: a time line of technological advancements, process background, manufacturing conditions, lists of manufactures, product, and services -- make this site about the industry - not about you.
Of course the banner on every page exist to your product site since visitors interested in widget history are more likely to be interested in buying widgets than the general public.
This site also has the ability to receive multiple backlinks from everyone since it is an independent and informative site.
Site #3. Widget services - possibly a repair service site, custom design, antique widgets, refurbishing widgets and offering used widgets. Generally speaking this site is captializing on a competely different market but can also link to the other sites without any fear of banning or penalties.
If this method is employed it requires constant vigilance to make sure "Google radar" does not get fine tuned again and pick it up.
I would do one site WELL and steer clear of trickery then all my concentration can be channelled into safe optimisation methods rather than worrying about the Spambot.
I'm really trying to decide whether or not I should take those other sites offline.
So if you all think that would be best for me to remove those sites, then I'll think about it.
How much luck do you all have from subdomains then. Is it okay to have blackwidgets.widgets.com and redwidgets.widgets.com. I've heard that this has been a good strategy in some cases.
Subdomain can help "alot" they can also get you in trouble "alot".
Over the long-term piskie suggestion works best -- adding -- your domain, your domain, your domain tends to develop "gone, gone, gone" because most people believe in the lottery. "maybe if I do this... I'll hit the jackpot"
The best strategy is your domain and then many... someone elses domains - because the control is someone elses.
Google is pretty clear about not wanting people to spread their content out over multiple sites. I know some people would be upset with me because I report this type of thing,, and especially report them to the directories to have their multiple sites removed, but if you do three sites, and someone else does 3,000, where does it end? It's spam, it's done with the sole intention of trying to gain more traffic from search engines by working around what they catch and most of all... it's not needed.
If you had 3 sites with 20 pages each, you would get better internal PR by having one well linked site with 60 pages, your internal pages targeting red widgets would show up just fine.
I think that a lot of people do this very same thing, and part of the reason is that it's easier to get a new domain name listed in Yahoo and Dmoz than it is to get them to deeplink you. I think that both directories are getting smarter about this and so are competitors.
If you saw your competitor breaking the rules and you could get them removed with a simple email, wouldn't you? Maybe not, but I'm betting that one of your competitors would.
Personally, I like the idea of peer regulation, it's a great way for everyone to keep everyone else within the guidelines.
I wish people that break the rules would realize the effect of what they are doing. Everytime SEO's find ways around the algo, ways to beat the system, it just makes the system tighten up that much more. When this happens some innocent people get caught in the middle and it makes it harder for legitimate sites to compete.
It amazes me when I hear people blame the people who report spam for the problems. It seems like there are many who think that something is wrong with this, don't you get it? The people reporting are not the problem, they are not breaking any rules. The problem is the SEO's who are always trying to find ways of stretching the rules or beat the system. It makes me wonder, if these SEO's are creative enough to come up with all of these schemes, why can that not succeed playing within the guidelines?
:)
Google is pretty clear about not wanting people to spread their content out over multiple sites.
Nonsense. Google is pretty clear about not wanting people to try and dominate the SERPs with multiple domains hosting the same information.
The following is the only mention of multiple pages and domains made anywhere in the Google Webmaster Guidelines: [google.com]
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
There are countless situations that can warrant the ethical use of multiple domains for the benefit of your users.
I'm not interested in getting into a debate about the virtues of single vs. multiple domains. There are pros and cons to both, and each approach is appropriate in different contexts.
What I do want to make clear is that Google has absolutely no problem with multiple domains provided they have substantially unique content and are not being used solely for the purpose of manipulating their search results.
If you had 3 sites with 20 pages each, you would get better internal PR by having one well linked site with 60 pages, your internal pages targeting red widgets would show up just fine.
In an ideal world this might be true. In practice... it simply isn't.
I completely understand where you are coming from... I just respectfully disagree. :)
Painting things black and white with a broad brush can be misleading when reality includes infinite shades of grey. An accomplished artist knows which shades to use in the proper context.
The use of multiple domains can fall virtually anywhere in this spectrum depending on execution and intention.
The bottom line for me is whether the users, Google, and their algo agree on the effective use of a given strategy, and in this case... they wholeheartedly do.
So, how do I go about removing those sites? I can remove all the pages easy enough. I don't really need to do any redirects on them since they don't get much traffic out of season. Should I just remove the pages and then go to the webmaster page on Google to remove the site?
Should I just remove the pages and then go to the webmaster page on Google to remove the site?
That would be a mistake as you would lose altogether the benefit of the work you've invested in them.
You have two primary directions you can go...
1) Actively develop unique content on the sites as fathom has suggested above. The greatest likelihood of being reported comes from your secondary sites showing up in the SERPs along with your primary domain. If you decide to go this route and want to be extra careful, just remove all the commercial elements and links to your primary domain until you have fleshed out your unique content.
2) Use 301 redirects to the most appropriate pages of your main site to take advantage of what little traffic there may be and any inbound links that you have developed for your secondary sites. In most cases, if you use a 301 redirect Google will merge the inbound links of the redirected pages to the target pages. This could give you a nice boost in PR for your primary domain.
So hold your ears "BANG", one is dead.... "BANG" second one is dead, right between the eyes.
IMO there is absolutely nothing wrong with having multiple sites with different themes about the same product line.
One site can cover your widget's exquisite beauty, another how savory and tasty they are, another how downright useful, another about their history, and so on.
A little creativity will give you multiple platforms from which to draw attention and traffic. If these occupy the SERPs, then someone else isn't doing their job.
OK, fire away.
