Duplicate Content and Indexing issues
-
Hey guys,
I have a client whom has an existing site www.currentdomain.ie and we have created a new site with a new domain name www.newdomain.ie.
They do not wish for it to be redirected. They wish for two sites to have the exact same content just with different logos. So for example if you search for current domain the search results present to you www.currentdomain.ie as the number 1 search listing and the same if you searched for their new domain.
I'm trying to understand how google might index the two sites if side wide canonical tag were implemented on either of the sites to get over the duplicate content issue.
How would google index the brand name of each site if one site canocilised?
I don't want to encourage this client with this idea as it appears to be nonsensical but I thought I should first understand fully what the SEO implications might be.
Thanks
Rob
-
Thanks Peter, I agree entirely. Have sent the mail to the client. Hopefully they will see some sense.
-
To add to what Tom said (and I endorsed his answer) - if Google honors the cross-domain canonical (and it's not a guarantee), then the non-canonical domain would fall out of the rankings (or, at least, certain pages would). Clients don't like to hear that, but the alternative is two domains competing with each other. At best, Google is likely to filter out one of the domains anyway (even without canonicals or redirects). At worst, there's potential for a Panda-scale penalty. There's very little to gain from this scenario, and a lot to lose, IMO.
-
Hi Tom,
Thanks for your response. I shall relay this information to my client.
Cheers
Rob
-
Hi Rob
Agree with you that it's not an ideal solution, but to answer your query:
In an ideal world, the site-wide canonical tag would instruct Google to ignore one domain in terms of SEO/PageRank. It would not necessarily deindex the site pointing to the new site, but it would be severely devalued in ranking - basically so it wouldn't appear for search terms. I wouldn't be able to tell you if it would also stop ranking the site for the brand term - if I had to put money on it, I think it would keep its ranking for the brand term, but this is far from certain.
Furthermore, as canonical tags act as a suggestion, rather than a direct order to the crawler, having two sites with identical content could theoretically still run the risk of a Panda penalty. It's unlikely, but it can't be ruled out. To rule out that risk, adding noindex robot tags to the webpages would do the trick, but I guess that sort of defeats the point.
As you can see, the whole solution is fraught with uncertainty and risk. In theory it could work, but not everything goes according to plan.
If I was in your shoes, I'd also push for a different solution as you have mentioned.
Hope this helps.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google detects wrong information to compnay's knowledge graph on search index - Please help
This issue is about website properties' information showing on Google's search index with brand keywords. We have 8 different domains that operated separately in 8 countries. All are responsible for their individual domain. When I Google it with our brand name 'Flight Centre' in Google.ca, Google's search index shows company website link with flightcentre.com and detects all information, social profile etc.. from Flight centre Australia. Please see the screenshot. How to change this information that Google shows or detects website link and all other properties from flightcentre.ca? Anybody about with a quick answer would be awesome? IqWeymZ
Branding | | flightcentre200 -
How to measure the penalty of duplicate content if we populate our provider bios on WebMD?
I work for a large healthcare system and we have an initiative to populate 2,500 of our our provider bios on WebMD. The proposed method for providing content is to supply it via API, in exactly the same way provider bio content appears on our site. When my colleague and I pointed out this would be an anti-practice as it would be disseminating duplicate content, we were asked to weigh: The penalty of the duplication The time and resources necessary to provide an alternative method (i.e., is there a programmatic way to supply unique content to WebMD) A few other questions we are investigating is if we can include links to each provider bio from WebMD to our main site. If this is the case, we can include a very short intro and direct users to our site if they want to learn more. The benefit of being included on WebMD is showing up for searches pertaining to expertise/specialties, as this will open our system to new users who likely won't search our providers by name. Any advice on how to measure the potential effect of displaying duplicate content on WebMD, considering their impressive domain authority?
Branding | | Account-Owner2 -
Best practices to rank a new website that does not produce much content.
Hi What would be the best practice for ranking a new site .. lets say a business site that does not have a blog to produce regular content in it. Building backlinks are not just the options when these days people are all focused in content marketing. And specially, when you are competing against big competitors. Big competitors are of course getting their contents published on bigger sites since they are already established. No one will talk about you when you are new in the market. And you still need to bring up your site to people and SEO is the only option for that. What would you suggest ? Thanks
Branding | | MindlessWizard0 -
Can you recommend a Content Delivery Network for hosting 20 videos across the website?
We want to host multiple videos across our website and are considering which CDN provider to use, with an average of 18.8GB per month for visitors, we are considering the following companies, some offer a free trial. https://www.maxcdn.com/pricing/ http://www.cdn77.com/pricing https://www.cloudflare.com/plans Does anyone have any other recommendations regarding CDNs for video streaming or have experience in this area as any advice would be much appreciated.
Branding | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Should we create content for a competitor?
We've got an opportunity to create video content for one of the highest authority news sites in our region. It's a great opportunity for links - PR8, DMR 7.84, DMT 8.86 and also to build our brand. However the site is also one of our main competitors in the SERPs, and we would be providing content to them that serves some of our most important seasonal and year-round keyphrase targets. So my dilemma is whether it is better to create the content and get the links, keep the content for ourselves and aim to make our site the authority for those keyphrases, or place the content with another (less authoritative) site that doesn't compete in our space?
Branding | | GBC0 -
Is duplicating video across several sites a bad thing?
Hi, We have a fairly successful YouTube Channel where we create unique and helpful videos that are related to our core business activity. When we create these videos would you consider it a bad thing to not only post them on YouTube but also a couple of the smaller sites such as Metacafe and Dailymotion? Sending to multiple sites would possibly achieve more total views but would this kind of duplication potentially be harmful to the overall success of the video and have a knock on effect when it comes to how it ranks in Google? Thanks for your help.
Branding | | ChrisHolgate0 -
List Quick and Dirty places to seo-tag images/content for new brands
I'm helping a new brand (service industry) to try to dominate the first page for their own name. They have a name that also exists in another state AND a negative Yelp review which (shows up #4, whilst they show up #1 on google unpersonalized search). Aside from Linkedin/Facebook/twitter, what are good places to Tag Images and have them show up under the search for this company's name. This is a picture/heavy industry (jewelry) and I'm looking to create profiles on several sites that would immediately show up if I tag the content properly. Are quora/pinterest good choices? I need to grab-bag as many properties as possible. Secondary question: would these properties on quora etc, respond well to exact-match anchor text links to shoot them past the negative yelp rating that is showing up #4 for their brand?
Branding | | ilyaelbert0 -
Promoting Great Content
Say I've just created some great content on my site, what does the forum think the best way of promoting this content via. social would be? e.g. Paid stumbles, tweets, posting on reddit? We've created some good content in the past, but never really been able to drive traffic to it through social sites and networking with a great deal of success.
Branding | | PeterAlexLeigh0