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Parked Domains And Search Engines


polock

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First let me say that I've searched and searched and can't find anything that addresses my question. So either I'm not asking the right question or the answer is just unknown.

 

Here's the story:

 

I purchased a .net domain (we'll call it example.net) because the example.com domain was already owned. Shortly after my site went live, I found that example.com was not renewed and I was able to snatch it up on auction. Now during the time prior to my owning example.com, when I would type in 'example' into google, I would get both my site (.net) and the .com version in the results. However, shortly after I gained control of example.com and parked it on top of example.net, google dropped the .com from it's results.

 

Now my question is, could it have dropped off because it's a parked domain, or could it be because the content of the site had not changed in roughly two years before I took ownership of it? Furthermore, should I resubmit the site to google and see if it becomes included again?

 

I might be obsessing a bit too much over the issue, but for some reason I'd just rather see the example.com be the 'main listing' in the search results for Google, just as it currently does on MSN and Yahoo. I've thought about just resubmitting it, but I'm fearful about exclusion of both sites for 'duplicate content'.

 

I'm just wondering if anyone else has any insight on how to handle .com & .net issues.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

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Hello,

 

It could also be possible that because its a parked domain name, apart from your own website, it doesn't lead anywhere, but originally it used too. Hence with no content to the .com, it goes down the list (google doesn't drop it, it just drops down the search list)

 

JimE

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It's most likely that Google saw it as duplicate content and figures folks would only be interested in one page.

 

Remember, any links out there should all point to the same site. If 1/2 of your links go to .com and 1/2 go to .net then you'll not get the full benefit of the links to boost your placement in Google or other search engines. Right now it's showing 16 links to one name and 22 links to the other. One thing that will help tremendously is to get them all pointing to the same name, regardless of which it is.

 

Google is pretty stupid in one way - it doesn't realize that pages belong together as a site - each page stands on its own - and it sure doesn't know one is parked on the other. It just sees that example.com/index.htm and example.net/index.htm have the same info and that can cause one to drop.

 

If all your links are going to .net then I'd not worry about .com. People who use search engines are looking for information, not the URL of the ones offering the information. If you get a high ranking (1st page) and have a catchy title and text that looks like what they are seeking then they'll probably not ever look at the URL to see if it's .com or .net.

 

Additionally, submitting your site to Google is nigh on worthless. Google uses what it finds via links 99.9999% of the time and submissions don't really do much any more. I've even heard suggestions to NOT submit from time to time. Google uses what it finds by following links as it scans the internet with Googlebot.

 

Think about what people will be typing in and looking for when they find your site. You need a catchy title - if someone is looking for funny clips and sports news then say that in the title. Check some sites you get info from and see what their titles are. Look at how they show up in the search engines... and don't focus on just Google.

 

Also make sure you use a good meta description. I found it on Google and when I saw "This is my domain" I thought, "Gee, that would turn me off" - even though it's true and a little of your personality in there, I suspect, it looks ... unappealing. Everything you do should be directed at bringing people to see what you have to say... as far as intro text, titles, descriptions, etc.

 

I hope it helps! At least it's a little better than walking away from a K22 paper jam! (less painful too!)

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Thanks so much for the input!! Thanks to the mods too for putting the post in the suitable catagory.

 

I do keep an eye on what terms are used to find my site in the awstats and try to keep the most 'relevant' tags up to date in the meta tags. I'll rework the description and do a little digging to see if I can correct the links to get them pointing to the more 'desireable' url.

 

As for the title though, it does bring up one more little question. I've had a tendency to change my title from time to time just to keep it funny and fresh (granted I'm probably the only one that gets a kick out of it). So that being said, I'm assuming that it would be better to place the site name before the wit for recognition purposes, such as:

 

Example.com:Insert witty phrase here.

 

That way the title has the site name right there for all to see. Or might this practice of random phrases in the title adversely affect ranking?

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Title affects ranking only extremely minutely... the search engines got tired of people gaming the rankings by stuffing titles.

 

The big thing is to draw folks in. You have to convince them when they are looking at those 9 other sitesthat your site is the one to select from all the choices they see when they look for <whatever>. The title and description does that.

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