Hi, I have a site http://www.docx2doc.com/ which performs reasonably well for being online for 1 week. Now however, I want to create a similar site which does the EXACT same thing, only with Powerpoint presentations. So, the natural would be to create http://www.pptx2ppt.com/ But, am I allowed to use the exact same site design, wording and and-placements ? It is basically a copy-and-pase site, with the word docx replaced with pptx. What do you think? Am I breaking any of google's rules or in any other way committing suicide with regards to search engine rankings (for both sites) etc. Your opinions or warnings are appreciated - I can take my 2nd site down in seconds if you think it is a bad idea to have two sites with so identical content...
I think its bad in more ways than one. Certainly, the search engines will treat one of the sites as duplicates. This is not good at attracting natural traffic.
Make the content reasonably different and I would expect there to be no problem. There are plenty of sites with similar content or functionality that do well with search rank, Adwords, and Adsense. The case where I saw problems was where I used some free content without checking for excessive duplication. In some cases, there ended up being more than 20 other sites that had used the same articles on the site that got penalized (Adwords minimum bid was several dollars instead of several cents). On another site with free articles there were only a handful of sites using the same articles and there was no problems with Adwords. My understanding is that the first sites using content don't get penalized while later sites do. Spend a couple hours rewriting (change at least 30%) and I expect you won't have a problem.
OK, so as far as I understand you - this is quite OK with regards to adsense (ie. I'm not breaking any rules or guidelines) but it is bad in terms of search engine traffic/ranking. So, I should spend some time rewriting the content. What about layout? Is it OK to reuse a site's layout/design - how do search engines consider identical site design/layouts ?
Haha... man I needed that last week, oh well, anyways good luck with the site. It should be fine to do as far as adsense is concerned. As long as you own both sites.
Spend some time rewriting content but I don't think you need to concern yourself with layout. The search engines focus on quality of the content, the inbound links, keyword concentration, etc. not so much on the layout.
Don't actually think that design/layout will have anything to say. Many good ranked pages use the same template. Rewrite the duplicate content and I think you will be in the green zone. If you are not sure about it, email the google adsense team and ask. Maybe you should take down one of the sites untill they approve it? Have emailed the Norwegian googlestaff a couple of times when i have had suspicious clicks and got great answers from them. Hey Dag Øyvind, I might know who you are
The search engines may not like it and may even drop one or both in the results. .. Just be carefull..and adsense does not stop dups .. the search engines do.
I'd say set it up, and email google just to see what they say. I don't think copying a design is a problem, afterall, there are only so many designs possible.
If its exactly the same (like copied and pasted) it is defiantly against the terms but if the content is on the same subject but is something fairly different you'll be okay!
I looked at both sites and I don’t see a problem – the content is not the same; only the concept. The use of the same layout (which is really nice by the way) or “Footprint†is generally not an issue unless the footprint is associated with flagged site generation programs that Google regards as spam. That’s clearly apparent in the targeting of the Ad Units – they produce significantly different results which is a defining characteristic of non-duplicate content. I do not think that you will be penalized, nor do I think either site will end up in the supplemental index as a result. For your own peace of mind though, when it comes to Google rules, it’s better to take the question straight to Google.
You should be fine. Most of my proxies are just cut and paste after I photo shop and change some graphics to make it look like a new site. I dont think it is breaking any adsense rules.
I emailed the Norwegian google adsense team today and got a reply within 2 hours. Excellent service. They said I was NOT breaking any rules and they also verified all ad-placements on both sites against the guidelines. They said everything looks fine and no problems reported. So, I guess now it's time to sit back and see if I can make any REAL money from this...