I thought this wasn’t legal, but I want to be sure (because my boss wants to imitate it and he’s been getting away with it for a while anyway).
If you go to google.nl and type in “scooterwijk”, you will see what looks like hundreds of different urls (different domain names) showing the same site. This is not our site but may become a competitor in the future.
I just want to know if this is somehow kosher— I thought I had read that this wasn’t (however when my boss did a duplication, he claims google guys he talked to on the phone said it was fine, whereas to me it looks like duplicate content with a single word changed… not sure how that can be).
If it’s not legal I’d like to report them. If it is legal, then my boss will be able to force me and the IT people here to do the same thing : (
Thanks
(ps I did SP search and after sitting for 6 minutes it timed out… and I refreshed. Timed out. Gave up.)
-poes
It’s “legal” in the sense that you can have as many domains as you want pointing to different pages on a site, and at first look thats what they are doing, each separate domain they have is pointing to a different page.
But where they will run into difficulties is when they start using the same template, navigation and then content across all those domains (which they are also doing). That is resulting in duplicate content on large sections of each of those domains.
The main risk with duplicate content is that Google will filter it our of their results at some point, so this site is running that risk.
Registering thousands of domains seems like an expensive way to run a trial on this strategy, but maybe for them the short term gain in rankings & sales outweighs the long-term risk to their website of having thousands of pages of duplicate content?
It’s not illegal to host duplicate content or have loads of websites on separate domains with identical content (if you own all of them - though it’ll damage the search ranking which is a bonus for you) - It should be pointed out here that they clearly aren’t just redirecting… Google is pretty smart at detecting and filtering out redirection domains - they are likely to be hosted separately. What violates the anti-cybersquatting laws is when someone other than the owner of the site starts buying up domains related to owned trademarks or sites which could be mistaken for the original or making fraudulent copies of websites and content (copyright violation). If your competitor owns all those websites and hosts them as separate websites, there’s nothing you can do.
The main risk with duplicate content is that Google will filter it our of their results at some point, so this site is running that risk.
Right now I’ve lost count at 10 pages of result : (
No, they are not redirecting. It MIGHT be a single server, but if you actually follow any of the particular scooters who show up, you see no redirection: the domain stays the same. And you can’t mod_rewrite your way around different domains (unless using domain_alias). They all have the exact navigation, text, logos… what I’m not sure about is if the scooter someone has uploaded appears on all those domains or if one domain has some% of scooters and other have others (maybe they are spreading out the submissions… people not affiliated with the site put their stuff up for sale).
If your competitor owns all those websites and hosts them as separate websites, there’s nothing you can do.
Ok. This means I’m going to be told to do the same thing (my boss spends over 3000 euros a year on domains he’s squatting… yes, both I and my husband choked when we learned my boss is one of those guys Destroying the Web).
So new quesiton:
Should I quit now, and retain my soul?
Or do it anyway?
I didn’t learn enough JS to go looking for another job yet. : )
It’s not illegal as long as it has different contents and URL.
If you look at my first post, it’s half of that: SAME content, different (tens of) urls.
But Alex has said this isn’t something I should bother reporting to Google, so that’s cool.
