Will buying a competitor negatively affect keyword ranking?

[paulgerst]

Hello All;

After reading a lot of great info on Moz, I wanted to ask my first question.  We are thinking about buying a competitor.  It is a smaller ecommerce site that sells a subset of the products we already sell.  The main value of the site is good ranking for a small set of keywords.  For example, if we acquire this site, we would now have up to 4 listing on page 1 for some targeted keywords.

We plan to operate the site separately from our own with its current name and technology.  We plan to be transparent with the domain registration info, change the contact info on the new site, etc.  Will the fact that both sites are owned by the same company negatively affect keyword rankings? Instead of having 4 listings for some terms will one of our sites be lowered since one company operates both sites?

The site we are buying does not have a high MozRank, MozTrust or Domain Authority score.   But it does have a domain that has been around for a long time.    In addition to the keywords, there is value is using this new site to do marketing tests and experiment a bit.  Thanks for any input.

Paul

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Don't think anyone would have a straight answer but my best guess is no. It would affect the value of a link if you choose to point from competitor --> main site (link is devalued) but I don't think it would affect rankings.

[paulgerst]

Oleg;

Thanks for the assistance.