Duplicate Content and Indexing issues

[daracreative]

Hey guys,

I have a client whom has an existing site www.currentdomain.ie and we have created a new site with a new domain name www.newdomain.ie.

They do not wish for it to be redirected. They wish for two sites to have the exact same content just with different logos. So for example if you search for current domain the search results present to you www.currentdomain.ie as the number 1 search listing and the same if you searched for their new domain.

I'm trying to understand how google might index the two sites if side wide canonical tag were implemented on either of the sites to get over the duplicate content issue.

How would google index the brand name of each site if one site canocilised?

I don't want to encourage this client with this idea as it appears to be nonsensical but I thought I should first understand fully what the SEO implications might be.

Thanks

Rob

[TomRayner]

Hi Rob

Agree with you that it's not an ideal solution, but to answer your query:

In an ideal world, the site-wide canonical tag would instruct Google to ignore one domain in terms of SEO/PageRank.  It would not necessarily deindex the site pointing to the new site, but it would be severely devalued in ranking - basically so it wouldn't appear for search terms.  I wouldn't be able to tell you if it would also stop ranking the site for the brand term - if I had to put money on it, I think it would keep its ranking for the brand term, but this is far from certain.

Furthermore, as canonical tags act as a suggestion, rather than a direct order to the crawler, having two sites with identical content could theoretically still run the risk of a Panda penalty.  It's unlikely, but it can't be ruled out.  To rule out that risk, adding noindex robot tags to the webpages would do the trick, but I guess that sort of defeats the point.

As you can see, the whole solution is fraught with uncertainty and risk.  In theory it could work, but not everything goes according to plan.

If I was in your shoes, I'd also push for a different solution as you have mentioned.

Hope this helps.

[daracreative]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your response. I shall relay this information to my client.

Cheers

Rob

[Dr-Pete]

To add to what Tom said (and I endorsed his answer) - if Google honors the cross-domain canonical (and it's not a guarantee), then the non-canonical domain would fall out of the rankings (or, at least, certain pages would). Clients don't like to hear that, but the alternative is two domains competing with each other. At best, Google is likely to filter out one of the domains anyway (even without canonicals or redirects). At worst, there's potential for a Panda-scale penalty. There's very little to gain from this scenario, and a lot to lose, IMO.

[daracreative]

Thanks Peter, I agree entirely. Have sent the mail to the client. Hopefully they will see some sense.