If you are trying to compile a list of things that Google hates, “Domain Farms” would be one of them!
A Domain Farm is generally considered to be a series of websites owned by a company which offer the search engines or users very little in terms of quality.
In many cases companies will invest in building multiple websites where one would be adequate, in order to try and gain higher listings in the organic searches, or to appear for a wider breadth of key phrases.
If you don’t think that there’s anything wrong with this, check out what Google says on this:
“Don’t create multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.”
Not to put everybody under the same brush, there are plenty of companies that will create multiple sites and make them unique and valuable to users, there are all too many that will simply create variants and try to “trick” the search engines to a certain degree.
Unfortunately those who do this aren’t particularly smart about what they do! More often that not they give the game away by including standard information on their websites such as their address and telephone numbers!
As well as that these websites are often hosted at the same location, with many sharing the same i.p address, all registered within the same Google webmaster account and not to mention the fact that the domain names are all registered in the same way!
Without trying to scare monger, if your company does have a variety of websites for a valid reason, take care to ensure that they are all different and their existence can be justified. Don’t try and flood a particular phrase with multiple sites, or create sites which are too similar – be careful not to cross over your targeted key phrases in any way.
You also need to avoid interlinking these websites, in order to avoid being seen as an attempt to manipulate the search results.
