Sub Domains & Server Balancing

How do SEs view it?

[brass monkey]

I am working on a site whose primary domain simply channels traffic to sub domains and the sub domains are using a load balancer to route traffic to the lesser loaded server. My question is that if the site, whose menus are currently non-spiderable, were found by the search engines, would the site get dinged for having duplicate content on 2 servers with the same primary domain, but different sub domains that are load balancing? Does that make sense? Anyone have any thoughts?

thanks, Brass

[aschrage]

I'd be interested in knowing this too, but I'm coming from the other direction. I have a site that gets traffic from Google and I would like to introduce a second server to share the load (without Google thinking I am trying to pull a dirty trick). Plus, it seems like such an arrangement would be scalable and you would be able to try out new ISPs or have multiple hosting vendors.

[LifeinAsia]

Do you mean that main site example.com links to a.example.com, b.example.com, etc? Then a load balancer balances the load for a.example.com between server1 and server2 (the usual method for using a load balancer)?

If so, then there is no duplication of content for someone hitting a.example.com on server1 or server2- SEs see that as a.example.com no matter which server it hits.

[brass monkey]

No, the site is set up more like this. The primary domain (example.com) takes the browser automatically to a.example.com or b.example.com. In essence, example.com is simple a portal/redirect that runs through a load balancer then drops the browser on to 1 of 2 servers (based upon who has excess capacity).

Does that help?

Brass