I came across this leading b2b portal of India http://www.tradeindia.com (PR 6) Now they have another mirror domain... http://www.trade-india.com/ (PR 7 ) Isn't it a Spam?? Only thing which differs is categories are changed intentionally on top....rest everything same...Both domains are running for more than last 2-3 years. If it is Ok i have seen many such sites getting banned by google...
hmm I have seen many sites where the owner has several domain names pointing to the exact same sites. These 2 are almost the same, but I guess not identical. I'm sure the intention behind it is far from pure, but with those sites having been indexed for quite a while, I'm not sure that Google will ban either one. - Mike
If you have a close look at it, you can clearly see there is hardly anything different and even if anything is different it is done intentionally so as to stop peoples complaining. Add to that both sites have different PR and he is using that to advantage.... Same was the case an year ago with http://www.ebookers.com and http://www.e-bookers.com Both the sites were identical, possessing different PR.There were some postings in various forums regarding the same and they have now redirected http://www.e-bookers.com to the main domain....
It's not spam as they're not trying to fool the search engines with anything. They're also having to work twice as hard to optimise and build links for two sites instead of one. It is dangerous though, they're in serious danger of picking up a duplicate content penalty. If I was them I'd 301 redirect one domain to the other. This would point all of the links at the same URL and they should get a nice SERPS boost.
I don't know, if you have a domain name with a dash, and use content similar to another site, not identical ... it makes me wonder why you would even bother doing this, unless you're benefitting from it in some way.
Actually as far as i can understand both are very old domains and when they started, at that time no one was much bothered about spams. trade-india was registered in 1996 and tradeindia in 1998. They continued with link building on both domains and when they realized that they reached a stage where they could pick up search engine rankings they utilized both domains. But i cannt understand when they have the advantage why they are risking both domains with duplicate content..... Also i cannt understand, how google ignored it for so many years...its does looks a pure spam....
I honestly don't think you accuse the site of being spam. As mike says, it's a good resource. The duplicate content is an issue you, I'd either put that down to lack of knowledge or they're just lazy.
They're within their rights to run the sites as mirrors, and they're on the same server, same IP so it's transparent. No cloaking or tricks. I have it on good authority that You can always run http://www.google.com/search?q=Buy+TradeIndia+Directory and report that, in your opinion results 1, 3, and 4 are for the same site, despite diff domains.
the dash .com seems to be the one that Google likes the best: http://www.google.com/search?q=Trade+India
I agree, it do provides websurfers with a lot of information. Donnt u agree that they are using the advantage of both domains with duplicate content which in a way is spam... So we can have as many sites on same ip with duplicate content? No penalties for same?
I can't see any difference between both versions at the moment, so maybe the webmaster got around to redirecting it.
Sorry, didn't make that clear. The site owner can do what they like, it's their business. Each individual search engine can index and process those sites as they like, it's their business too. And each web user decides which search engines gives the best results and shifts loyalty accordingly. Now, Google have said they penalise duplicate content so * site owner is free to create duplicate content * search engine is obliged to detect and disregard duplicate content * user is given ways to report duplicate content I'd say these guys have slipped under the radar. It might be interesting to use curl to pick up a page on the site and change the user agent to an official googlebot string and see just what gets served.
But the better way was that they should have redirected all domains to a single domain if their intention was to disallow anyone stealing their names. But here it is been used to gain search rankings with all domains...infact with some keywords, i have seen pages from both domians trade-india and tradeindia ranking amount top 10 results in google...
There are some very good sites out there using some very spammy methods. I don't believe that it's in Google's best interest to ban them. I remember one of my old thread ... lol
I don't believe these guys have any real advantage in running two domains. As I said earlier, they have to work twice as hard to get both domains to rank. It would be far easier to have one site and then you'd only need to do half the work.
Search this term in google bag closing machinery , results from both the domains are in top 10 results of google.....