Hi, I have http://www.affiliateseeking.com & http://www.1hostseeking.com They have the same web design, but are of totally different topics in that on is about affiliate programs and the other is about web hosting. Now I have heard that having duplicate content on both and the same design is likely to result in a penalty. But these two sites have totally different content and just have the same design. What do you think, do you think I am worrying over nothing or do you think I need to re-design one of them? Thanks!
You will not get in trouble with google on this. You said it yourself: the content is NOT the same. How does google know the heading picture is the same - just a different color? Google reads text, not pictures.
That's ok then! Here's another one. http://products.simplysearch4it.com & http://www.simplysearch4it.co.uk They are both product price comparison's apart from one only includes US merchant products and the other one includes just UK merchant products. The design is totally the same as the .co.uk is a UK version of the .com US / worldwide site. Do you think these are alright also. I'm asking this because I have recently changed the co.uk site quite a bit. I use to have quite a bit of content pulled from the .com site which made alot of it duplicate and I think this has caused the .com site to have a penalty. I have now taken all of this duplicate stuff of the .co.uk site so that it is now just a products site that only includes UK merchant products, totally different from the US merchant products on the .com site. There is still some things that is the same though or similar. These include the TOS, Help, etc. Do you think these two sites should be alright with Google. I think I may ask for a re-inclusion for the .com site and I would like to know first or do you think it's best for me to re-design the .co.uk site. Thanks yet again!
The thing is I am running these two same templates on the same server using the same contact details in the domain names whois. With all the other same templates that are used they are all used by different people I think. So would this be a problem or am I worrying over nothing yet again.
Hi John. You do seem to worry overmuch. Are you expecting to rank on the contact details? If not - don't worry. If so, make sure the headings and titles and descriptions are different (for instance related to the specific site).
If you read my post #5 above then you will probably realise why I am worrying over every little thing. My .com site was having over 50,000 uniques a month and is a large site and now it is getting under 1,000 uniques from it a month. I have spent 4 solid years working on this and sometimes I have spent over 30 hours without any sleep doing research, finding and getting content, writting scripts, etc. All work has now nearly finished and now the sites received a penalty. Although I know I can succeed very well without Google, it just means that if I am not in Google then my competitors will have one over on me and being in Google is crucial these days as if people see your site and find that it's not in Google then they start to wonder why. It's like if you totally got banned from Google then your PR will become 0 and you will then loose alot from that alone as it's so hyped up when really it doesn't mean much.
Yeah.. you may have some 'issues' there... you may have tripped a few things 1. Duplicate content 2. Owner profile (multiple networked sites) 3. Boiler-plate designs I really ALWAYs advise people too put it all in one site - where possible/applicable Here a whole bunch more about Duplicate content problems SNIPPETS and See anything familiar in there?
The content's not the same. I don't see you getting into trouble. Make sure the links and sections are different as well and you'll be fine.