2 Similar Sites But Different Global Audiences

[NeedYourThoughts]

Has Google's Search Engine come along far enough now to recognize (but
not penalize) that our new website www.xyz.co.za is very similar (in
many cases the same content) to our other main site www.xyz.com but
intended for the Africa market and not the U.S. market?

What I am trying to do is make it so our NEW www.xyz.co.za site
doesn't cause us duplicate content or mirror site penalties with our
main website www.xyz.com since our new Africa website (.co.za)
contains a lot of the same content (but some different content/
pages).

The main reason I am blocking our new Africa website (in robots.txt
file) is because I don't want to take any chances with getting our
main website (.com) penalized by Google and seeing our rankings fall
because of it. If I can be assured that Google will not penalize one
or both sites because it realizes even though the content is very
similar/same and that the websites come from the same place/company
but they are intended for totally separate global audiences (.com
vs .co.za), then I won't have to go through all this. Also, currently
we only have one Google Webmaster Account but does it make sense to
have two separate accounts - one for our U.S-based and one for our
Africa site where we can set the global audience so Google will not
penalize either site for duplicate content or mirror site issues
because it knows they are for totally separate global audiences?"

Need Your Expert Advice!!!
Thanks very much in advance

[Vision Jinx]

Wow, that’s a good question. I would like to think that Googles
algorithms are capable to distinguish it since your using geo specific
TLDs. I could see it being a bit more "iffy" if they were both .com.
Google has many variables that go into their ranking besides just
duplicate content (I am sure you know) and I have seen evidence of it
in other Google directories where it is also based off relevance of
the geo-location (and host language) and such so their flag ship
search engine should be capable also. So, if it is catered to an
African market then they will find it most useful and links from that
location will point to that site over the .com one where in the US
they will mostly link to the .com one so Google should distinguish
them in their directory searchers for those locations eg. http://www.google.co.za/
(The .com search will probably not show much from the other, and visa
versa.) Ideally, since these are still just algorithms, the Sitemaps
are the best way to do this to prevent any confusion but if you need
separate accounts for it I just don't know.

The closest info I found on it was here >>
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359

Use top-level domains: To help us serve the most appropriate version
of a document, use top-level domains whenever possible to handle
country-specific content. We're more likely to know that www.example.de
contains Germany-focused content, for instance, than www.example.com/de
or de.example.com.

Anyways, I would still recommend trying your question in this group >>
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

And also see if you find any more info here on it >>
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/?hl=en

If for some reason they don't give you a reasonable answer post back
again and I can try asking one of my Google contacts for some
clarification.

Cheers!
Vision Jinx


On Dec 19, 11:15 am, NeedYourThoughts <expertwebmast...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Has Google's Search Engine come along far enough now to recognize (but

> not penalize) that our new websitewww.xyz.co.zais very similar (in

> many cases the same content) to our other main sitewww.xyz.combut
> intended for the Africa market and not the U.S. market?
>
> What I am trying to do is make it so our NEWwww.xyz.co.zasite
> doesn't cause us duplicate content or mirror site penalties with our

> main websitewww.xyz.comsince our new Africa website (.co.za)