Multiple domains, same content - Is it bad?

Is having multiple domains name with same content bad for search engines

[fxchain]

Hello all,

I recently came across several domain names all displaying the exact same site:

barnesandnoble dot com
BN dot com
Books dot com

They are not redirects, just the same exact content I believe.

In a search engine point of view, is this bad? Won't SE's ban the sites or would it hurt rankings for duplicate content?

What are your thoughts?

Francois

[edited by: pageoneresults at 7:41 pm (utc) on Oct. 13, 2005]

[Stefan]

Very bad. In fact, it's a recipe for disaster. As you note, it's likely to get the whole works booted out, or pushed down to page 100.

And welcome to WW.

[fxchain]

That was my first thought as well. But I heard opposite comments about the subject, and the fact that such a big site like Barns & Nobles is doing it is giving me doubts.

This practice would be great if it was legit. Imagine buying all the domain names according to your keywords list!

Anyone actually did or is doing this tactic and would like to comment?

Francois

[Stefan]

Yeah, the example you cited makes one wonder (while I was replying to your first post, the examples appeared via the mod - they weren't there at all when I first read it). Perhaps if you're big enough you can get away with it - I sure wouldn't involve a successful smaller site in such a scheme though.

[sem4u]

bn redirects to barnesandnoble for me.

[sem_scotty]

along these lines, don't the SEs see http*//www.mysite.com (with the dubs) and http*//mysite.com (without the dubs) as duplicate sites?

[edited by: caveman at 9:42 pm (utc) on Oct. 13, 2005]
[edit reason] Fixed URL examples [/edit]

[caveman]

sem_scotty, yes they do and you need always to 301 redirect one to the other. But to stay on topic... ;-)

1) barnesandnoble = main site. Working fine and showing well in the SERP's.

2) bn = 301 redirecting (properly) to barnesandnoble. Very few bn pages indexed at all. Most of the bn pages that are indexed are "URL only."

3) books = 200/OK, i.e., it is pointing to barnesandnoble and showing that site. It is NOT redirecting. Most of the books pages are URL only, but some (more than bn) are Supplemental.

4) Neither bn nor books appear to be hurting barnesandnoble in the SERP's.

OK, that covers What is happening. The question one might ask is: Why are bn's 301's and and books dup content apparently having no ill effect on barnesandnoble?

:-)

[fxchain]

I did have a indexing problem on yahoo in the past regarding the www's. For this reason, I always put these lines in the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www
RewriteRule (.*) [%{HTTP_HOST}...] [L,R]

It will automaticaly redirect the none www format to the www format. For a windows platform, it has to be done through IIS.

But let's not step away from the subject of my post ;)

Francois

[LongView]

Anytime I have done a site redesign (3 times now) I have taken the old site and design and just thrown it up on to a new domain name, changed all references within it using a find and replace to the new domain name, and left it sitting there. A couple have been picked up and well ranked by search engines, and my main site has not suffered at all. The only difference in ranking is that the others are of course not as heavily linked to by outside sites, so my main site stays well ranked while those just are mediocre, but ive tossed some google ads up onto them and generated some cash with them, as well as linked to the main site with them improving my link popularity. Ive only done this on a small scale though, cant speak for buying like 20 domain names.

I know of one site has purchased at least 30 domain names and duplicated their site .. but they've modified the designs and colors and structures. Text content is the same. They are top sellers of product and ranked top because of creating their own lnk popularity using this method.

But whose got time to create 30 sites? :)

[edited by: caveman at 4:08 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2005]
[edit reason] Removed specific URL reference, per TOS [/edit]