Innocent duplicate sites from the UK

To my opnion Google is doing it job as best as it can.

What is happening:
If you want to search sites with Google in a specific language G has 3 ways to determine language.
1) by language setting of the site
2) by the extension
3) by location of the server

I myself live in The Netherlands, finding sites in Nederlands (Dutch) is easy either the site's language , a .nl site or a server located in The Netherlands.

For UK sites it is more difficult.
Language: English. Ok but so are many more sites that are totaly not from the UK. That's why for the UK Google only has the option to look for extension .uk and for servers located in the UK.

To me it has always been very obvious.
You want international visitors: get a .com site
You want visitors from your own country: get the extension from your country (in the UK that's .co.uk for a commercial site).

If you are searching "pages from the UK"

Dear hutcheson,

The current ODP listing at http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=rat pack&utf8=1&locale=en_gb&start=21 (site listed at 29) - shows my www.ratpack.biz site which has been recently been substancially altered to feature just one show.

New domain (told to buy by Google) is www.rat-pack.org.uk is awaiting ODP listing in the same category. This now features a different show. Site has also been substancially altered since Google told us after almost a year that the .biz site is being penalised because of a duplicate. Well of course there is a duplicate because when no indexing problem in the then new Google.co.uk arose we wrote to them and this is exactly what they advised us to do.

Whist there are perhaps just 4 pages which are more or less the same which are public help pages giving free advice - the rest is different content.

Dear tome2,

You wrote - "And you may want to avoid cross-linking them in a way that makes them look like affiliates."

Why would this be a problem if they are different prducts with different content ?

Dear pvgool,

You wrote - "To my opnion Google is doing it job as best as it can."

How can you say this when all of a sudden you are not indexed and never will be in the country you live ?

Please read carefully the earlier post which roughly states -

1 Google.com introduce Google.co.uk

2 As the biggest web host in the UK has servers in Germany which it did not state - this wipes out anyone who does not have a .uk domain.

3 It takes months to get to the bottom of this problem and get the above reason for the disaster.

4 Google advise to get a .uk domain - NOT get a .uk domain and ensure that the content is different to your .biz site.

After following exactly what they said I end up being penalised with my .biz site because it has a duplicate (of a site that does not and will not ever exist in Google.co.uk) - which then drops from 8 to 160 for the main keywords on Google.com.

Whilst this may have been an honest error on Googles part - I have to virtually start again and sit and wait and wait and wait till eventually hopefully it will be indexed in Google.co.uk

My .biz site never will be indexed in Google.co.uk until I move web host.

NOTHING has been done by Google as far as I can see to avoid other people suffering the same fate - so they may also be told to and subsequently get a duplicate sites and unwittingly submit them to Dmoz - hence wasting editors time - which was the topic of the post.

PS I am no expert as you can probably tell - so all help and advice is appreciated.

You have been told time after time: we are not Google, and we don't care what they do. If you have a problem with them contact them. If you have questions about G find another forum as this forum is ONLY for questions related to DMOZ.
BTW if I go to google.co.uk and search for Rat Pack Tribute ( http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=Rat+Pack+Tribute&btnG=Search&meta= ) your .biz site is on first place if I search the whole web. So your statement "all of a sudden you are not indexed" is totaly not true. If you want to know why your site is not found when searching "pages from the UK" reread my previous post. And this time don't stop at the first line because you don't like it.

You are free to suggest your new site. But keep in mind that if we decide to list the site this will have totaly no influence on Google, they decide themselves if they want to list your site.
And remember one of the DMOZ rules: we will only list one (1) site of a company/person if sites are about the same subject.
To be sure your new url will be included in DMOZ you will have to:
1) transfer your content form old to new site
2) make the old url redirect to the new one
3) ask for an update of your current listing
Not only will this list you new url in DMOZ but this will also update you Google listing (if you did the redirect correctly).

Dear pvgool,

What kind of idiot would search every country in the world - when they specifically want UK ONLY

The site is primarily aimed at UK - IT IS NOT IN UK LISTINGS

If you dont care - as you say - so be it - no need for you to comment anymore on this topic.

Thankfully there seem to be some people who do care and are making a constructive contribution.

I told you how the "problem" originated (see post #21).
And I told you how to solve it (see post #25).

From your reactions it seems to me that you in both cases only read the first line and you decided that you didn't like it and stopped reading any further.

Dear pvgool

I do not wish to fall out with you or anyone else - but here are the facts not an opinion or a guess.

It took Google several replies and 6 months to diagnose what was wrong - these questions and replies are in black and white and dated.

You may have known instantly but Google apparently did not.

The answer is you say - "Ask for an update of your current url "
- Oh I see (silly me) this will be done tomorrow will it ?

Crooner said:

The answer is you say - "Ask for an update of your current url "
- Oh I see (silly me) this will be done tomorrow will it ?

Click to expand...

Don't know. Just as any suggestion it will be handled when an editor has time for it. But like me a lot of editors prefer to handle update requests before the other suggestions as they are much easier to proces.
Tip: if we can't find information on the old site (either a 301 or manual redirect) pointing us to the new url we will not change the listing. This is not because we don't want to help you but just to protect listed sites (or else anybody could ask for a change of any listed site to their site).

Dear pvgool,

It has been stated in a previous thread that it can take up to 2 years.

Could you lend me £250,000 for a couple of years ?

I decided to go with 2 sites with a different product and different content when at last the final problem of a duplicate site was eventually diagnosed by Google.

Since then the sites have had a huge amount of time and work done on them in order to comply with what I have been told to do by Google - so all I can do is wait.

Yet again let me reiterate - this nightmare not the fault of Dmoz.

However if just one person of limited technical knowledge (like myself) learns from this - then at least it has helped someone.

Crooner said:

However if just one person of limited technical knowledge (like myself) learns from this - then at least it has helped someone.

Click to expand...

OK, lesson to be learned.
If you want your site to focus on a specific country and its inhabitants than you should get a site with an extenstion for that country and preferably also a webhost located in that country. You might get a 'better' (= cheaper) offer from a webhost in an other country or for a .com extention but in the end it will be you who will have to pay the price.

Yet again let me reiterate - this nightmare not the fault of Dmoz

Click to expand...

Thank you.

Dear pvgool,

Your right again - Ive been a total idiot - I should have known that Slough England is in Germany - its obvious !

I decided to go with 2 sites with a different product and different content

Click to expand...

Actually, no, what you decided to go with is splitting your content for the same product (a tribute band) over 2 domains.

You're not going to get both sites listed in the ODP. And has been already stated here, if you want to get the uk domain listed instead of the .biz one, you'll need to set the .biz one to redirect to the .uk one. Feel free to submit an update request to change the URL once you put that in place.

The reason you're not getting a lot of commiserating comments from people here is that your issue is strictly a Google one and, since this forum is all about the ODP and not Google, a discussion of how to save yourself Google grief really isn't appropriate for this forum. Not that it isn't a important topic to some web site owners, just that it isn't an appropriate topic here.

Dear Motsa,

Your 2 points

1 You wrote - "Actually, no, what you decided to go with is splitting your content for the same product (a tribute band) over 2 domains.
You're not going to get both sites listed in the ODP."

Your comment has no factual basis what so ever.

They are 2 different products at which a vast majority of different people are employed - how can you possibly make a statement that they are the same product ?

Another reason for keeping 2 sites (after we were told to get them) is that the much larger show was dominating the smaller show - so a lot of time and money was spent to differentiate between the products and websites.

National football teams have websites - so do the players and so do the club teams they play for - these have obviouly just split the the same product have they ? will you now be delisting all these ?

2 you wrote - "The reason you're not getting a lot of commiserating comments from people here is that your issue is strictly a Google one and, since this forum is all about the ODP and not Google".

Look at the title of the topic - it is not about me - my website - my misfortune. I have only given the website details to be open and honest.
No need for prople to cry for me - trust me Ill get by.

crooner, listen to motsa. She's right on this one, and you'll save yourself the effort of writing umpteen pages to Google techs complaining about ODP doing what their editors' guidelines telling them to do.

One company, one website. When you've got 100,000 people working for you, like GM, we can think about two websites. Until then, your figures just show that the ration is 50,000 people per website -- and you don't have enough people for the first one. You don't want to go there. Our rules work better for you than your proposal does. Under your proposal, you should get no listings. Under ours, you'll be considered for one.

That last statement that you quoted wasn't intended to mean that I thought you were looking for sympathy about your specific situation. I just wanted to clarify why maybe you weren't getting more interest in the situation than you were (i.e. why you were largely getting "it's not an ODP issue" responses).

As for the other, well, I looked at both sites and they're still fraternal mirror sites so I stand by my comment.

Visit our sister sites mozilla.org | chefmoz.org | musicmoz.org | open-site.org

Yes, that is exactly the example you should be following.

Dear Motsa,

You wrote - "I looked at both sites and they're still fraternal mirror sites"
------------------

Fraternal means brotherly - eg - Bill Smith & Don Smith two brothers who are DIFFERENT people.

A Mirror provides a duplicate image.

In my opinion the factual evidence is unquestionable.

However if you choose try and invent some different interpretation then so be it.


PS - more relevant to the topic has pvgool found Slough England in Germany yet ?