Does having hundreds of domain names effectively game search engines?
July 8, 2010 7:29 AM Subscribe
Is using hundreds of domain names to redirect to a dozen or so identical sites (under a dozen or so different domain names) an effective method of SEO?
I know someone who, in addition to believing in all the run-of-the-mill SEO voodoo, believes that a very effective internet ecommerce marketing strategy is to collect hundreds of domain names made up of various keywords related to their business and additional words like "planet", "superstore" and "mall" and then have them most of them redirect to a dozen or so different sites with the same version of a single ecommerce system. This person's argument is that they will be most of the top pages of results instead of just being a single result.
I am unconvinced that this is more effective than a single site, with aggressive marketing and maybe some important keyword purchases.
I know someone who, in addition to believing in all the run-of-the-mill SEO voodoo, believes that a very effective internet ecommerce marketing strategy is to collect hundreds of domain names made up of various keywords related to their business and additional words like "planet", "superstore" and "mall" and then have them most of them redirect to a dozen or so different sites with the same version of a single ecommerce system. This person's argument is that they will be most of the top pages of results instead of just being a single result.
I am unconvinced that this is more effective than a single site, with aggressive marketing and maybe some important keyword purchases.
No. Those kinds of link farms are detected by Google's algorithms as being incestuous and it reduces the score of the site they're trying to pimp.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:36 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:36 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
From a general standpoint, Chocolate Pickle is right- Google is relentless about punishing people who try to game their system, and they've got a lot of PhD's to throw at that problem. There really is no way to "trick" your way to the top of search results, and anyone who says they can is a liar.
Specific to this person's position: it would be trivial to see that all of these different domain names and sites all come from essentially the same place. Domain names, which are little more than aliases for human beings to remember, mean very little to a search engine.
posted by mkultra at 7:43 AM on July 8, 2010
Specific to this person's position: it would be trivial to see that all of these different domain names and sites all come from essentially the same place. Domain names, which are little more than aliases for human beings to remember, mean very little to a search engine.
posted by mkultra at 7:43 AM on July 8, 2010
Response by poster: Domain names, which are little more than aliases for human beings to remember, mean very little to a search engine.
I realize this, but could the behavior be obfuscated but running the sites from different servers, different hosts, etc.? Would Google go as far as to look at domain name whois information?
I do expect that it would compare the sites' content to determine how close each is to other sites, which seems like it would make it easy to find out this sort of thing.
posted by iknowizbirfmark at 7:56 AM on July 8, 2010
I realize this, but could the behavior be obfuscated but running the sites from different servers, different hosts, etc.? Would Google go as far as to look at domain name whois information?
I do expect that it would compare the sites' content to determine how close each is to other sites, which seems like it would make it easy to find out this sort of thing.
posted by iknowizbirfmark at 7:56 AM on July 8, 2010
What's the argument here? That the links all contribute to "PageRank" (or equivalent for other search engines) or that people type in domain names and add "mall" and "superstore" to them and those typos and guesses will feed your core sites traffic?
What successful ecommerce companies do this? Other than maybe acquiring common typos, I don't see anyone doing this. 10 sites is 10 sites. Buying hundreds of sites to feed to those sites sounds like a lot of effort and management with very little potential for upside.
There is money in the ads related to domain squatting, but as a feeder to your main site, I don't get it.
And yes, the duplicate content will get punished by the responsible search engines.
posted by artlung at 8:01 AM on July 8, 2010
What successful ecommerce companies do this? Other than maybe acquiring common typos, I don't see anyone doing this. 10 sites is 10 sites. Buying hundreds of sites to feed to those sites sounds like a lot of effort and management with very little potential for upside.
There is money in the ads related to domain squatting, but as a feeder to your main site, I don't get it.
And yes, the duplicate content will get punished by the responsible search engines.
posted by artlung at 8:01 AM on July 8, 2010
It's been said many times before and I'll say it again here: effective SEO consists of unique content, accessible semantic markup, and elbow-grease. Improvements in those areas will pay much larger dividends than the tweaky tricks, and they run no risk of penalizing your site.
posted by verb at 8:06 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by verb at 8:06 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer:
Your friend's idea is based on a key principle: that the words used in the domain name have a huge impact on the search rankings. While this does have some effect, he's wildly overestimating how much impact words-in-the-domain-name have. Other sites linking to your content is a much bigger impact.
The biggest danger is that your friend is using the 'Different domain names pointing to the same content' as a sort of gateway drug to industrial-strength automated linkfarms. And that's the kind of stuff that Google will drop the hammer on with extreme prejudice.
posted by verb at 8:10 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
I do expect that it would compare the sites' content to determine how close each is to other sites, which seems like it would make it easy to find out this sort of thing.This. Google keeps the Internet on its server farm. These kinds of comparisons are trivially easy, and are actively filtered out of most search results. The "Duplicate Content Penalty" is not a penalty so much as a refusal to reward duplication: Google only shows one result when a dozen pages (or sites) have the same content.
Your friend's idea is based on a key principle: that the words used in the domain name have a huge impact on the search rankings. While this does have some effect, he's wildly overestimating how much impact words-in-the-domain-name have. Other sites linking to your content is a much bigger impact.
The biggest danger is that your friend is using the 'Different domain names pointing to the same content' as a sort of gateway drug to industrial-strength automated linkfarms. And that's the kind of stuff that Google will drop the hammer on with extreme prejudice.
posted by verb at 8:10 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Your friend's idea is based on a key principle: that the words used in the domain name have a huge impact on the search rankings.
I think that it's also based on the idea that a behavior that gets multiple sites into, say, the first page, will result in a greater number of people buying from one of the related sites. I don't really think that this is right for sophisticated consumers, but I could be wrong.
In this case, it's a mostly B2B business, and it's hard for me to imagine that a buyer of the business's products won't catch on to the fact that all the sites are the same if they were successful enough of their sites into the top results.
posted by iknowizbirfmark at 8:23 AM on July 8, 2010
I think that it's also based on the idea that a behavior that gets multiple sites into, say, the first page, will result in a greater number of people buying from one of the related sites. I don't really think that this is right for sophisticated consumers, but I could be wrong.
In this case, it's a mostly B2B business, and it's hard for me to imagine that a buyer of the business's products won't catch on to the fact that all the sites are the same if they were successful enough of their sites into the top results.
posted by iknowizbirfmark at 8:23 AM on July 8, 2010
You should not attempt this today without using something like the dada engine, so it's surely more cost effective to simply purchase online advertising.
You could however easily hit all the even vaguely relevant key words by offering diverse customer testimonials, that's east enough.
If your business is international, then offering different languages might improve search results, especially via different tlds, and looks extremely professional. If you're not international, well there's still Spanish, Canadian French, or anything else particularly local.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:43 AM on July 8, 2010
You could however easily hit all the even vaguely relevant key words by offering diverse customer testimonials, that's east enough.
If your business is international, then offering different languages might improve search results, especially via different tlds, and looks extremely professional. If you're not international, well there's still Spanish, Canadian French, or anything else particularly local.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:43 AM on July 8, 2010
I realize this, but could the behavior be obfuscated but running the sites from different servers, different hosts, etc.? Would Google go as far as to look at domain name whois information?
That's not what they're detecting. They are looking at the link topology. Tight knots of interlinking with virtually no linking in from outside are a red light.
And yeah, this is not just unproductive, it is counterproductive. Google actively punishes sites which are pimped this way. It isn't just that it fails to raise your site rank, it results in your site rank being reduced.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:18 AM on July 8, 2010
That's not what they're detecting. They are looking at the link topology. Tight knots of interlinking with virtually no linking in from outside are a red light.
And yeah, this is not just unproductive, it is counterproductive. Google actively punishes sites which are pimped this way. It isn't just that it fails to raise your site rank, it results in your site rank being reduced.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:18 AM on July 8, 2010
Aside from detecting content duplication, it's very common for Google to weed out fistfuls of domains that only link to each other. Tell your friend that if it was as simple as buying enough domains and putting the word "superstore" on their pages, it would have been tried by now. Only instead of the word "superstore" they would have used the phrase "free porn" and instead of dozens of domains they would use thousands.
However, I do agree that this can be an effective ecommerce strategy, but only if you're the one selling SEO advice to the prospective domain owner.
posted by rhizome at 10:27 AM on July 8, 2010
However, I do agree that this can be an effective ecommerce strategy, but only if you're the one selling SEO advice to the prospective domain owner.
posted by rhizome at 10:27 AM on July 8, 2010
Put it this way: It's nothing a hundred thousand other people haven't though of a decade ago.
Google THANKFULLY knows how to slap that junk down.
posted by carlh at 10:56 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
Google THANKFULLY knows how to slap that junk down.
posted by carlh at 10:56 AM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]
Google isn't standing still. Neither are the SEO guys. This is a running battle. Every now and again some SEO guy finds a hole in Google's rating algorithm, and temporarily boosts a bunch of sites. It stays that way until someone at Google notices it, and then they go and change their algorithms to plug the hole. This has been going on since Google became important and widely used.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:26 PM on July 8, 2010
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:26 PM on July 8, 2010
Someday someone is going to write a fascinatingly geeky book about the SEO wars, and all the approaches used by SEO guys to cheat and the ways the search engine guys coped with them.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:35 PM on July 8, 2010
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:35 PM on July 8, 2010
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posted by DanielZKlein at 7:36 AM on July 8, 2010