Henry — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 00:46:48 +0000

Thanks Webmistress:
The reason I am combining them all into one website is because:
All of these city domains are cross-linked one way or another, and I think I am being penalized for it. Everyone says that there is the constand danger of penalties if sites are cross-linked. And I want to avoid that.

The Webmistress — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:40:30 +0000

Why minimise your chances of being found? IMO it is better to have separate sites that can be targetted specifically for localised keyword searches and by combining them into one new site you'll be making it harder for yourself by starting from scratch!

If you leave the existing sites as well as building the new one it is 'possible' that you could be penalised for duplicate content if it was brought to the attention of the SEs, however I think this would be unluckly (but don't quote me on it!)

If you do just 'park' the domains, if there is no site for them then the domains will drop from the SEs as they'd have nothing to crawl and list.

Thanks Jeeves

Henry — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 22:02:14 +0000

But what if they ditch the big site into which I am moving the various city sites? That would be a boomer!
How do the engines treat parked sites?

JeevesBond — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:44:05 +0000

Well it depends on how your host operates but typically SE's hate a redirect.

I wasn't aware of any specific penalties for duplicate content, thought the SE's would simply ditch one of the sites.