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I wanted to ask what is the best strategy for this situation:

We have a site example.de and we are launching a dedicated version of it for the Austrian market. Since both .de and .at sites use german language at the first few months we are going to show the same content in both sites (both domains point to same servers which choose what to show dynamically). Will this penalize our rankings because of duplication (and how can we tell google that "at is a copy for the de site").

In a month or two, .at users will start to see exclusive content for their region (though some parts of the site will stay the same).

Since we are not trying to cheat or smth else, how can we ensure google doesn't falsely penalize us?

Thanks

HouseMD
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1 Answers1

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If you are going to show same content on both domains than I would suggest to redirect one domain to another one otherwise It will be considered duplicate content and eventually you will lose something.

You can use 302 for redirecting which does a temporary redirection, or You can use 301 for permanent redirection which tells google that content has moved permanently to other domain.

But if you are planning to keep different content on both domains after a few months than I would say go with 302 redirect.

And if you are putting same content on example.de and example.au that will not impose any serious problems because you have different tlds with same second level domain.

But if you put same content on example.com and something.com than there will be some serious duplicate content problem.

But a much better approach would be to do something like this example.com/us , example.com/au , example.com/uk etc for countries or example.com/en , example.com/fr etc for languages.

metadice
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  • we are going to have example.de and example.at (both in german language, but with different defaults (at users see at posts by default, but can change to look at .de user posts)). We are going to use [link](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077) Since it looks like the correct way to go. – HouseMD Oct 04 '12 at 13:53
  • Also regarding example.com/de. We already have an established example.de site, so we now want to offer a localized version of it to Austria users. I am 99.99% sure, that an austrian user would like to see example.at as the sites address and not example.de/at – HouseMD Oct 04 '12 at 13:55
  • You are right, if you have an already established site than it's ok. And about your concern for duplication I would suggest this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo – metadice Oct 05 '12 at 05:18