Q: Problems with splitting site across 2 domains

What are possible problems between splitting site between multiple domains.

[christine]

Help. I have a client that has split their site between multiple domains by using a third level domain in part of their site, but not all of it. I have concerns that this situation may dilute their link popularity by splitting it between the sites.

This client had started consolidating several products (had been hosted on distinct 2nd level domains www.product1.com, www.product2.com, etc.) into one combined site (using several 3rd level domains, e.g. product1.companyname.com, product2.companyname.com, etc.). The problem is they never finished consolidating. Now they have some links that point to the old domain (http://www.product1.com/…) and some that point to the new third level domain (product1.companyname.com). I am concerned about what this may be costing them in search engine ranking, usability, etc.

I have a number of specific questions:

1) Will effectively splitting the site across two domains hurt the Page Rank (or more generally the page's ranking on any engine) of the old or the new site?

2) There are links in the new third level domain site (product.companyname.com) that still land on the old site (www.product1.com/support/index.htm). Homepage links are still 302 redirected to the new third level domain (product1.companyname.com). Are there any problems with a situation like this where there is a mixing of new and old domains?

3) Are there other issues I should be considering? I've already thought about the affect on clickstream/visitor tracking, cookie passing, and general customer confusion. What else should I be thinking about?

Any advice you can offer would be very welcome. I'm getting a migraine just thinking about it.

Thanks,

Christine

[SEO practioner]

Christine hello and welcome to WW!

I hope I can ease your migraine a bit :-)

OK' wow- sounds like they really messed that one up. I'm not sure how Google will look at all of this but, it dosen't sound too good to me at first glance.

Does your client have any backlinks? If so, to each site or just one?

Your questions are hard to answer because we don't have enough to go on here. But personally, I would play it safe and you should advise your client to discontinue what it is they are doing. I think theyr' heading into trouble with Google- I wouldn't bet my life on it but I wouldn't take chances with their rankings.

What was wrong with the site before? What is their current PR?

[christine]

Boy, just sharing my headache made it feel better. Thanks.

There are inbound links from outside sites to the old product standalone site (www.product1.com).

The links to the product.companyname.com site are from only two sources, internal links from within the site itself and links from the parent company (www.companyname.com).

The weirdest part is the site product.companyname.com has a good PR. In fact when I query Google for links, it shows the same number of links as the www.product1.com site.

I only recently inherited the site situation so I can only speculate as how the situation evolved as it did. My guess is they added the third level domain to facilitate tracking through the site network. It’s one of the most intriguing yet mind boggling sites I’ve worked on. Uh-oh, headache’s coming back…