two sites on same hosting 3

[richcleverley]

Hi,

The company I have just started working for have two sites with similar content on the same hosting plan and think that Google might be penalising them because of this.

The hosting plan allows add-on domains through cpanel and when you add a new site it just creates a directory in the main sites root, then creates a subdomain and dns entry for the new site that points to it e.g.

Mainsite root
----addondomain directory

As far as I can see, the http requests link back to the directory structure for the add on domain ie.

http://maindomain/addondomain

Do any of you know/think that google etc. will see this as a breach of their rules and choke back the search rankings for the second site (bearing in mind that the content is similar although not exactly the same).

Hope that makes sense anyway.

Richard

 

[ChrisHirst]

nope, because for one there are no Google "rules"

I don't see how they have 2 sites given your post

2 sites would be
ww w.domain1.com
&
ww w.domain2.com or sub.domain1.com

they have one site and a subfolder in your example.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[richcleverley]

Hi Chris,

The directory structure is correct, it's the way cpanel handles addon domains in a single hosting account. You can get to a page three ways:

http://www.maindomain.com/addondomain.com/page.html

or addondomain.com.maindomain.com/page.html or addondomain.com/page.html

You can see it in action here:

http://www.ictechnology.net/ictechinformatique.com

http://ictechinformatique.com.ictechnology.net

http://www.ictechinformatique.com

All three will give the same page as that's how cpanel sets them up.

So, I am presuming that when google crawls a site they see the addondomain directory and because it has similar types of content to the main domain (not the example I showed you before though) google doesn't index it properly because it decides it my be search engine spamming (which it isn't because the two sites are advertising different but similar products).

I have thought about using robots.txt to not allow the addondomains directory to be crawled. Do you reckon that my work?

Thanks,

Richard

 

[ChrisHirst]

google will only crawl pages that it can find links to

if there are no links pointing to the subfolder URI it is highly unlikely to get crawled.

SEs have no idea and cannot find the server folder structure unless you link it for the crawlers.

more likely it isn't indexed because of

a/ No or not enough links pointing to it.

b/ it is in the aging delay period.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[richcleverley]

That can't be it because the site has been going for a while. Traffic dropped off earlier in the year when the hosting was changed to what it is now hence our thinking that the directory structures must be at fault. Other than that, no changes have been made that would adversely affect the rankings.

Yes, I understand that search engines can't follow a directory structure if there are no links between them. What I suspect is that they pick up the structure from the server response headers and have throttled back the rankings because of that.

Richard

 

[Wullie]

What I suspect is that they pick up the structure from the server response headers and have throttled back the rankings because of that.

What is being returned in the headers that makes you think this? The headers should return nothing that points to it being anything other than a separate domain.

Hope this helps

Wullie

YetiHost - Quality Coldfusion 7/Windows Hosting

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[ChrisHirst]

just speculation and wrong

no changes have been made that would adversely affect the rankings.

By you
I assume you mean

Google has been through several updates in the past few months and you have probably been adversly affected.

and more than likely by poor quality inbound links

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[richcleverley]

Thanks Chris and Wullie,

It just seems strange that it all started with the change of servers. I did read something a while back about this problem but can't find the links anymore.

Oh well, we'll probably change host for this site and see if it does anything. I'll report back.

Richard

 

[ChrisHunt]

If you're worried about this, I suggest you set up some 301 redirects to shove people that request the subdirectory over to the add-on domain.

You could also use robots.txt to stop the directories being indexed.


-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[richcleverley]

yes, the robots.txt was defintely the way I was thinking. 301 redirects!! Of course, I'd forgotten all about them.

Thanks Chris

 

[MarkZK]

On a similar note to this, if you don't mind me jumping on the end of your thread (sorry), I have a just registered a second domain, could anyone tell me what is more likely to happen.

If I type in mysitename at google my mysitename.com is ranked at the top, but is mysitename.net (the second domain) going to (eventually) get ranked in second place (with the keyword "mysitename") or is google going to ignore it completely as it links to the same page/contents/server, any ideas ?, thanks.

 

[ChrisHunt]

So you've got two different domains pointing to exactly the same content? What will probably happen is that Google will pick one of the two sites to list and ignore the other. It may or may not pick the URL that you want to list.

I suggest that you just get the .net domain to 301 redirect to the .com (or vice versa).

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[MarkZK]

Yeah, I think that is what's happening has the site doesn't show up in any of the three main search engines index when I type "mysitename.net" as the keyword, I'll try the redirect out, Thanks.