Will I get penalised for double-cloaking?

[leelive]

Back in 2005 my website was banished by Google for 12months for cloaking.

I had bought a load of domain names containing my keywords. Each domain name was promoted and advertised as if it were a website, but they simply linked to my website (cloaked).

As part of the process to undo the damage I was advised to buy another website and linked all the domain names to that one. I was told it would be easier to rescue my original website than try to start again. The second website is a copy of my existing website but with different colours.

That worked and through other measures I have been at the top of Google ever since.

As the page rank of the 2nd website doesn't matter in the last few years I have been buying up domain names of ex-competitors and linking them to my second website. A couple of them had been in business for a few years and then for one reason or another stopped trading. I felt it was a shame to waste such good domain names as they had been promoted all over the place.

But now I have just re-designed my main website. Rather than update the second website I have made a copy of the home page and linked all the pages to my first website.

If you search for one of my ex-competitors or stumble-upon one of their links you are taken to my 2nd website. From there all through-pages are re-directed to my first website.

Is this double-cloaking and will Google penalise for first website for it?

Comments welcome.

Lee Live
www.lee-live.com

[Marc J]

First - what you're thinking of doing, and have done in the past, isn't cloaking never mind double-cloaking.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355

Sounds more like a "doorway page" to me, though.

What you are doing is risking being penalised for duplicate content (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359), as by the sound of it you have multiple websites with the same content. The changing the colours tactic - do you really think Google are that dumb?

The best thing to do with multiple domains is: -

1) Point them each to different websites. And I mean different. or

2) Point them all to the same website (parked), but with a 301 redirect for any not matching your main domain. A 301 redirect tells search engines the page they had indexed has "moved permanently" and to index the new page instead. Essentially this means that all except your main domain will be indexed - the only reason you have the domains is to stop competitors using them or to catch traffic in the case of ex-competitors. You can use them on literature if you like but they will never be indexed by search engines.

[DJ Jules]

:agree:

What he said :)

[leelive]

First - what you're thinking of doing, and have done in the past, isn't cloaking never mind double-cloaking.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355

Sounds more like a "doorway page" to me, though.

What you are doing is risking being penalised for duplicate content (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359), as by the sound of it you have multiple websites with the same content. The changing the colours tactic - do you really think Google are that dumb?

The best thing to do with multiple domains is: -

1) Point them each to different websites. And I mean different. or

2) Point them all to the same website (parked), but with a 301 redirect for any not matching your main domain. A 301 redirect tells search engines the page they had indexed has "moved permanently" and to index the new page instead. Essentially this means that all except your main domain will be indexed - the only reason you have the domains is to stop competitors using them or to catch traffic in the case of ex-competitors. You can use them on literature if you like but they will never be indexed by search engines.

Thank you for such a indepth reply. Really helpful.

All the best

Lee

[HeartandSoul]

My understanding is a 301 redirect will not result in penalty, good reply Marc, really helpful, might think about the above myself!