I used to think Google could do no wrong. Now I am beginning to see that they are pretty devious. For instance....The Google Webmaster Guidelines state: Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. But check this out....do a Google search for buy video games and the first 2 SERP results which are totally different domains......are the exact same site...nice isn't it. You know if that was one of our site we would be in the Penalty right now! Unless we spend a few grand a day with Google! Isn't it ironic don't ya think!
Without getting into details about these websites you showed us, Google is a business and they will do what ever fit them and what ever might make them more happy.
google is a PRIVATE business ... it's not your local community meeting... they do business how they like to do business
I see nothing wrong in that..They are doing all it for business and not for social service.So for advertising it is totally depends on them how they take decision.They are doing all these to maximize profit.
No, it is not right. If you have a set of rules for everyone, then 'everyone' has to follow them. If one does not follow and is given a free-ticket by Google to do whatever they want, then everyone should be allowed to do whatever they want.
That only makes Google look like a poor quality search engine. I'm sure Google will catch on to this or else visitors will frown upon this.
I agree the big men have their own rules. If that was any normal person with duplicate sites on different domains, they wouldnt be ranking nowhere !
I can see your point. They do stuff like that a lot. I can think of many of their guidelines that they violate themselves. Google is King though. They can do what they want even though it is not fair (according to them even). So their saying "Do as I say , not as I do"...
There's nothing wrong with that - ads have nothing to do with rankings. What I object to is their use of exclamation marks in calls to action for only their own products.
This is probably because they used to be two completely different stores and now are essentially the same store. I used to buy games at both stores back in the day.
Just start using Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com. If we keep just using Google and making them superior over everyone else, they will keep doing whatever they want and keep monopolizing the search market.
I really don't see a problem with these two companies both ranking at the top.... They ARE probably the two biggest sites/stores for video games. As such they are more often than not exactly what the searcher is looking for when searching for broad terms like "video games". They ARE relevant. The two sites share the same CMS... so what? They are the same company so why shouldn't they? My guess is they started out as separate companies and through mergers became one (I don't really know the history of these two particular companies... but this happens frequently due to mergers). If they were previously 2 companies each with their own brand, why NOT keep both brands alive with their own sites? They would likely each have had butt loads of backlinks prior to any such merger. They likely each have their own following of gamers... I see nothing wrong with them both showing up. I'll bet if you analyzed their backlinks that you'd find they both have LOTS of relevant links for that particular search term. Generally when people are posting complaints like these it's because they are trying to promote a site in that vertical and are not having a lot of success going up against the titans. There has never been a "duplicate content penalty" at Google... They may discount the content on duplicate sites affecting scores on those ranking factors which are content based but duplicate content pages FREQUENTLY outrank the originals by getting a better OVERALL ranking score by compensating some other way for lack of original content such as getting more and better backlinks. Penalties at Google prevent you from ranking on page 1 regardless of what you do... Duplicate content will never prevent you from ranking on page 1... it only makes it a little harder to do so.
You cannot fight the 'titans' like Canonical said. You can only bow to them because these are corporations with multimillion dollar advertising budgets while you my friend and I do not even have a fraction of that for advertising. They will always be on the top, no matter how content rich your website is because they get loads of traffic each day for which they pay nice $$$ to Google and other search engines.