Using mulitple domain names to improve search rankings

20/09/2007 by paul

There are two questions that bug me about Google rankings more than any, and both are related to the origin and depth of content.

I have recently discovered a company that has registered perhaps 10 or more domain names all related to their main product. These sites are either replicating the same content as the main site, or have a keyword-rich holding page (they are single-page sites), with a link to the main site.

My understanding, and this has been borne out through my work with related sites in the UK, Canada and Australia, is that Google doesn't like content replication. This has caused issues when I've tried to create global presences using local domain names from a single product database, where the product detail is identical. Rarely did all sites appear high in rankings at the same time, and typically, only one site would benefit from the content, even if the content itself was of sufficient quality to be ranked within the top 5 results globally. The question is, how does Google work out which to credit with the content and what is the benefit of duplicating content across multiple domains? If Google recognizes the homepage links back to the main site, for example, what's to stop anyone from creating multiple domains, e.g. boxed.com.au, boxed1.com.au, boxed2.com.au, etc, to benefit the main site? And any credit will only be as valuable as the links to the new domains, anyway, which will each require inbound links for their own credibility. What's more, the company in question isn't doing this!?

Keywords :  domain names, seo, search rankings,