Hi anneb-ga!
Search engines generally "fold" similar information into single results. You
won't harm your Google index (or any other search engine index) by
having two sites reference the same page, but only one will appear in
the listings. Generally, the page with the higher rank will appear.
I've found a lot of information on this topic by searching Google for
the words "duplicated content penalty google":
This forum: http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=8510
Has a post that says: "Duplicate content doesn't leed to a penalty,
but plese note that Google will only display one copy in the SERPS,
normally the one with the higher PR." In other words, the highest
ranked page will be the one the users will see.
No matter which approach you choose, rewriting or DNS aliasing, you'll
very likely end up with the same results. In both cases, the search
engines will choose only one of your sites (whichever is the most
popular) to present to the user as a search result. Since both of
your sites are going to be identical, it should not matter which is
presented as the result.
In this case, I would suggest the easier route and using a simple DNS
alias. For an example of a very popular site using a technique like
this, please see "www.msdn.microsoft.com" and "msdn.microsoft.com".
Please let me know if I have answered this question with enough
detail. If you require more information, don't hesitate to ask for an
answer clarification.
Regards,
mmastrac-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
anneb-ga
on
03 May 2004 11:02 PDT
Thanks for the research, it's appreciated. Here is the problem: what
was provided doesn't definitely answer my question; facts are needed.
Statements that are prefaced by "generally," "very likely," and
"normally" are assumptions, not facts.
Being a first-time user of Google Answers, I made the assumption that
Google moderated this site and that they would provide answers to
technical questions, such as mine. My err.
Regards
|
Clarification of Answer by
mmastrac-ga
on
03 May 2004 11:47 PDT
Hi anneb-ga!
I'm sorry that there was confusion over the role of Google
researchers. Since we have no affiliation with Google (besides being
screened initially), we are not privy to confidential information with
regards to the inner workings of the search engine.
The best answer I can provide to you will be gathered from outside
observation of the search engine, but any answer would be no more than
a hypothesis. I have a great deal of experience in both networking
administration dealing with DNS, as well as technical experience in
working with web requests that gives the ability to make a good guess
at something like this, but of course, cannot guarantee that any of it
is correct.
If you like, I can provide more detailed explanations into how DNS
aliasing works, how search engines behave and would most likely
interact with the DNS aliasing, and try to locate real-world examples
of the behaviour you're interested in. Unfortunately I believe this
is as much as you will be able to obtain from the public Internet
itself.
Your other option, always available, is to ask for a refund- minus the
initial $0.50 non-refundable listing fee.
I'm sorry that I could not provide a satisfactory answer. Please let
me know how you would like to proceed.
Regards,
mmastrac-ga
|
