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Hi,

Thanks but I'm referring to content on our website - blogs, landing and webpages.

The benefit is that we attract traffic we wouldn't otherwise be able to do (we're using someone else's well known brand name), then have the opportunity to convert it in to our own sale

Lisa

I recently started with a company who've benefited from using a competitors brand name to explain why theirs is superior.

They're not wrong and neither have they been derogatory, however they have had significant traffic to their website using the competitors branded search terms.

I'm concerned Google will penalise us for this (if so can you point me to case studies/similar examples), or am I worrying unnecessarily?

Yesterday I discovered another 200 live domains, some which are a replica of the main site, most which redirect with a 301.

Should I take most of the domains offline - Google will surely think we're guilty of scraping the main website and creating spammy links to it?

Is it worth keeping any domains that are similar to our brand/products? Why pass that opportunity to our competitors?

I've just started to work for a company who've purchased masses of domains with every conceivable permutation based on all their products with every extension possible e.g .biz  . eu. .net (including .co.uk and .com of course).

I have two questions:

1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?

2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?

What a good point: The website/domain owner could have simply purchased the domains, she didn't have to put them online.

Having researched the issue more I can see that she has two or more domains (different URL's), with exactly the same content. In other words 2,3 or more websites are almost exact replicas of each other, with links going to the 'mother' website. What should I do and what are the repercussions?

Our website (blahblah).org has 32 other domains pointing to it all from the same I.P address. These domains including the one in question, were all purchased by the website owner, who has inadvertently created duplicate content and on most of these domains. Some of these referring domains have 301's, some don't - but it appears they have all been de-indexed by Google.

I'm somewhat out of my depth here (most of what I've said above has come from an agency who said we should address this before being slapped by Google). However I need to explain to my line manage the actual issues in more detail and the repercussions - any anyone please offer advice please?

I'm happy to use the agency, or another - but would like some second opinions if possible?