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