Scenario Below I would value some opinions on.
If I create several sites each with its own separate domain name.

1. www.something1.co.uk
2. www.something2.co.uk

And the two websites are largely about the *same theme* but different in that they are containing different graphics, but are basically having sections of same text, not identical but certain passages are exactly the same..

An example would be Website 1: My company/business activity but aimed at *retail clients/visitors*

Website 2: My company/business activity but aimed at *trade only* visitors..therefore having two distinct reasons for existing but containing also similar text, but not exact same structure and not the same graphics etc..

My question is: Is their any danger that search engines would think this is a *trick* where people use different domain names for the same websites. I have read/heard that some people do this as a way to try to get more rankings and that Search Engines can regard this as spamming and will punish the site.

Does anybody know what the parameters are for this? As I do not want to get on the wrong side of the search engines.

Any help appreciated.:cartman:

Not sure, but found this for google:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality
"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."

So long as the content differs properly then you should be fine. Duplicate content is something I've heard recently being very hard hit by Google.

You cannot tell for sure is the search engines will penalize this or not. To be on the safe side, just rephrase those certain passages, so they are not identical anymore.

This is whats worrying me, so in other words to be on the safe side, can't I use any of my same product descriptions or service descriptions do you think?

I'm very glad I asked this question, it seems the crux of the matter is *what determines* replication and what does not.

I'm talking only about *some textual reprodution* entire website, entire graphics will not be at all related, the layout, the number of pages etc. etc. nothing will be related just the kind of details will be similar as follows:

My company details *obviously*
My contact details *obviously*

If any products are advertised on more than one website then *the product descriptions will be more or less identical*.

Company ethos also is most likely to be identical...

Of course graphics, and some of the services will be unique and different.

Thanks for your valuable input. I think the solution is to be very very cautious, in fact I'm going to try to make the text as unique as possible.

Originally posted by Tanuk
This is whats worrying me, so in other words to be on the safe side, can't I use any of my same product descriptions or service descriptions do you think? Sure. For example, think of any product that's sold heavily on the web. Do a search for it, and copy a phrase from the product description into the Google search box. Most of those descriptions are copied directly from materials provided by the manufactuer. You'll find dozens if not hundreds of pages using the same text as the description.

Google has over four billion pages indexed. To think that they're comparing each of them with the other four billion plus, paragraph-by-paragraph, to find any duplicated text is a real trip into paranoia.

:):) Your right!! It does put it into perspective when you say it like that. I think there is so much hype about Search Engines and the importance of ranking or not ranking that it is easy for the inexperienced like me to get a bit paranoid. Thank goodness for webhostingtalk thats all I can say :)

Thank goodness for webhostingtalk thats all I can sayAll for all the other helpful forums and websites out there, I would add.

Some more information here
http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20030801Duplicatecontentinthesearchengines.html

http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130

I'm talking only about *some textual reprodution* entire website, entire graphics will not be at all related, the layout, the number of pages etc. etc.

Google doesn't worry about you graphics, layout and other unrelated to you pages' TEXT as Google indexes only TEXT and some information about it structure (some tags). So you should have rather different text on your pages not to be mirrored ;)

Yeah I think google have some rule on duplicates but you would have to check it out for yourself.

Hi and thanks for the tips, I did check what google had to say on the topic, they just gave a general idea saying *don't use duplicate pages* under subdomains and domains.

Bit vague. I'm sure that alot of companies have several websites with similar contact pages or at least some of the similar info about their company and few products. Hmm I'll have to think about this one carefully.

Appreciate your comments and warnings. All taken on board gratefully.

Google can recognise templates, doesn;t care for images, and thrives on text. So it's your template and text you really want to look to vary to help you most on the issue.

And - to be perfectly honest - having multiple sites has little benefit in terms of SEO unless you are actually pushing those multiple sites. For most non-SEOs simply pushing one site is hard enough.

HI Brian,

Thanks for your inputs, well if you mean by *templates* the exact same website framework that is just repeated then definitely that is not the case with myself.

My situation is more to do with my core activity being web applications/ design/ hosting, but there are different specialisations of our portfolio that justify separate businesses.

In much the same way as you are having a website *nice looking one as well* that is mainly focusing on SEO, well it looks better to have that as opposed to just having a small section devoted to SEO amongst a larger section outlining your other services...

So on the different elements of services that can be provided there is going to be crossover, particular contact pages and of course I want to highlight that all the sites are linked, eg. they will contian links to each other..

Each site will highlight the different areas of services we are going to be offering.

My main worry is not getting ranked high but I wish to *avoid to be seen as trying to trick the search engines* thats my main concern.

I have read the some search engines might punish you if they think your trying tricks or stunts to get higher listings.

If you want one for clients, and one for visitors - or whatever your speaking of. The best way for it to work in search engines is: http://www.something.co.uk/clients
http://www.something.co.uk/visitors
It's also cheaper since you only need one domain.