Do 2 identical sites cause themselves to loose ranks?

I have two identical sites with the same targeted keywords as their domains. The only difference is one is a .com and the other a .net. Well since launched the .net one first, it got indexed by Google and was quickly climbing up the serps within the targeted keyword.

Then I launched its .com counterpart. And ever since, the two both got bogged down and would not climb past the search result page that the .net one had initially achieved, even though I give them equal backlinks, identical content, titles and meta tags.

Could the fact that they are identical hurt their rankings?

 

No, use canonical meta
like my site: http://referer.us/ it's PR4
many many has identical content as it, e.g: http://access.im/ http://asylum.name/ http://cctv.ws/ http://emap.ws/ http://exel.us/ http://freepl.us/ http://ly9.net/ http://mug.gs/ http://owned.name/ http://plugin.name/ http://shortme.ws/ http://yogift.us/ and many many other uses domain

 

So then any idea what's causing the sudden drastic drop in ranking?

 

I think the later online site might be treated low value in Google's eyes. Even worse, if you have built links between these 2 sites, both 2 sites would be hurt eventually, IMO.

 

Any idea what could cause Google to deem it low value suddently?

 

well i think if the two sites are exactly the same (ie. identical copies) then i think the ranking of one or both would suffer. for example Google just wouldn't rank two identical sites number 1 and number 2, even if they are on different domains. so at least one of them is going to suffer i think.
Graeme

 

I'm guessing this is it. Because before the .com site came online, my .net was floating up aggressively.

 

Duplicate contents has been very big issue across many sites, and Google always recommend to ensure the quality and uniqueness of sites's contents. As for lowering of ranking of your .net, it could possibly due the normal process of new sites ranks then drop after few days or weeks. I suggest for you to focus your contents only to one site and make another content for the other. Strong links will help your .net site to gain rankings again...

 

Google doesn't like duplicate content so that is where your problem is.

 

Since they only differ in domain extension, then Google might be considering both site as one which conflicts with their relevancy with the topic according to your keyword and contents. Thus Google is having the hard time choosing the right page or url to rank your keywords.

 

Thanks for all your feedbacks you just answered my problem.

 

A good solution would be to redirect one domain to the other. That will take care of the "duplicate content penalty"

 

Can't do that because I'm trying to rank both of them.

 

If you're trying to rank both you shouldn't use identical content!

 

I don't believe Google is that interested in the structure of your site when it comes to ranking search results. All it cares about is which pages (from all the pages in the internet) best meet the search terms. If two of those pages are identical, it's not going to serve up both of them side-by-side in the results.

So make your text different between the two sites. If it's worth *having* two different sites for then, you must have different things to say to them. If not, you may find Google doing what your clients cannot bring themselves to do - identify a "main" site and ignore the other.

Have you tried setting a "geographic target" for each site in webmaster tools?

 

you might get banned from google on one of the site if they are totaly similar to each other.