# Clone Website took my Ranking?



## TshirtGuru (Jul 9, 2008)

I had a good ranking website for: www.mainwebsite.com.

I also have the same exact website for: www.mycitywebsite.com. I made them a clone to get higher rankings.

Well, now my www.mycitywebsite.com took the place of my www.mainwebsite.com.

I want it vice versa like I had it. How do I change it or do I leave it alone?

Weird thing is, www.mycitywebsite.com doesn't get many hits so I don't know how it took its place.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> I also have the same exact website for: www.mycitywebsite.com. I made them a clone to get higher rankings.


This wasn't a good idea. Making a site with duplicate content of the original site could cause big problems



> Weird thing is, www.mycitywebsite.com doesn't get many hits so I don't know how it took its place.


The number of hits your website receives doesn't really factor into your ranking (if they do, it's a very tiny part of the overall picture). Search engines generally don't have access to your traffic stats.

Most likely the search engines felt the second site was more "relevant" somehow.



> I want it vice versa like I had it. How do I change it or do I leave it alone?


My suggestion would be to shut down the duplicate site, do a 301 redirect to your original site.

Then, build out more content on your original site that meets the needs of people who are searching for that local information.


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## Calibrated (Oct 26, 2006)

Cloning a website for better SEO is generally a really bad idea. If its your actual intention to get a better rank than its pretty stupid to make another site that competes with your own primary site. Many search engines like Google are now smart enough to "penalize" websites for whats called Duplicate Content. This also applies to a single site that tries to trick search engines into thinking the site is larger than it really is. If you wish to make another site, by all means go ahead...but at very least make the content unique for each site and then link them to each other so they "compliment" ...not compete with each other.


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## PositiveDave (Dec 1, 2008)

Google webmaster tools will explain all. www.google.com/webmasters/tools


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## TshirtGuru (Jul 9, 2008)

Oops, had no idea. I didn't really make the clone website to get a better ranking, but rather I was going to make another business DBA and start another website. Well, I got lazy and put that idea on hold so I thought I'd just copy and paste my primary website content for now thinking it couldn't hurt my ranking but rather help it at least (it's been about 6 months now lol).

I guess i'll delete the clone websites content for now, hopefully that brings my primary website back on the top ranks.

Thanks guys.


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## earlandkirk (Jan 15, 2008)

yeah that was a bad idea


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## Idakoos (Apr 24, 2009)

I don't want to reapeat how bad the idea was (i agree with everybody)... but it would be interesting how did you reached the conclusion that cloning the site would help.


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