Hey, I would like to clone my site at mysite.com to mysite2.com so that I can use the same database and content with both but have a different name and theme. Will search engines 'punish' me for doing this? I think I read somewhere that duplicate content gets held against you?
Yes, your second site will be penalized because of duplicate content and search engine will not allow it to appear over there.
^^ in that case the offense is MORE Don't do that may be your FIRST site too get banned by search engines.
When you copy and past a site into a new site, the new site gets "Gray barred" (no value/no rankings). But the first site will get a PR penalty as well. It is not "duplicate content", it is an "affiliate site" and Google doesn't allow any SEO advantage to this. They will not even rank any of the new site's pages anywhere. It's just a waste of your time. And there is the common IP address issue. Any cross linking between sites will get a gray bar. Now, to use a common database with common data is ok, but the templates used to display it must be totally different HTML code. But we get hit with a duplicate content penalty on this because of the "part description" is the same.
Two sites w/ exact same content... bad idea. I wouldn't waste my time. If you can't come up with original content for the second site then you're better off with just one. While there is no real "penalty" per say for duplicate content, the content on the duplicate site will be drastically devalued making it much harder for the duplicate site to rank. Duplicate content can outrank original content, but it has to rely more heavily on the other off-page ranking factors (like inbound links) which are not related to the on-page content.
Google.com and Google.co.uk both are having same content so Google will penalized ? Guys please do not mislead the newbies. Site A and Site B can have a same content. if Site A owner will give the complaint to Google then Site B will penalized. If both sites are owned by single owner then no problem.
That's a completely useless strategy. It did work about 6 years ago but not anymore. you're basically dilluting the value of the content, from past experience neither domain will rank very well.
Your site will get penalty of course. Google will find duplicate content as well as affiliate site. So I advice you not to waste your time.
You're completly wrong man! First off, there's hardly any content in Google.com and Google.co.uk. Secondly, would Google penalise themselves? Thirdly, before answering and misleading "newbies" inform yourself, (however judging by your answer I can tell that you're the SEO newbie here!) google.co.uk/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359&query=duplicate+sites&topic=&type=
I have try using full duplicated content blog. The result is my blog getting little traffic and Google only index few pages.
you can copy content but dont allow google to crowl on new website... allow yahoobots to one site and allow googlebot to one site.. that can help when your site is banned by any one search engines.. you can switch to another site by robots.txt
Duplicate content definitely lead to penalization. You can try to make different sites rather than having a clone. If you definitely need a clone just instruct Google bot not to index second site.