Well, SpamUp just became PR2 in less than a month of it starting. I guess PR update happened today (for me).

Did it affect you?

Nope. PR for my site is still 0

But then looking at my stats, google hasn't visited the site since the 22nd December. Not that i think it would help much if they did.

I went from having 11 "links" in google to having 2. I think google either dislikes me or I'm not doing "it" right. Oh well.

Do google penalise if you have another domain name sitting ontop of the primary one? I bought two domains - slightly different spelling and sat on ontop of the other to both point to the same site, would I be penalised for that?

I asked Aaron about it and here's his answer -

Thanks I guess my content is severely lacking which is probably why google isn't paying much attention at the moment.

Anyway well done on PR 2 already

Can you please link me to the site you are talking about here?

New site - a little over a month old, not a lot there, mainly forum and really it's me talking to myself mostly, although I notice you recently signed up as a member

www.stargate-game.com

offtopic: Just for the record it did not send me an activation email for the first time and again when I reuested it manually (following the request email link). Then I went to the UserCP to change the address and then it sent me the activation mail for the first time. I know how vB works so I requested the mail but it might not be so for people who are newbies to all such stuff.

And, Interested in a Post Exchange (for SpamUp.com)?

Any idea why it didn't send the activation email? This could explain why most of my members join and have 0 posts. Is this a me issue or a VB issue?

I'll join spamup.com now

*edit* i turned off email verification. maybe later when i have significant numbers i can turn it back on.

Well, it DOES help to have email registration turned off. I would suggest that you talk to my host about the email problems (I can say cos I did not have ANY Spam Filters!) and also if you have any hacks installed then look into it that they are not causing any problem. However, if you have the same problem on your virgin script and also your host disclaims any issues then the best solution would be the vB.com forums

Good Luck and thanks for registering at SpamUp.com

Yes you can get penalized for duplicate content if the domains are just "sitting" on top each other. Make sure you only have one primary domain and 301 redirect the other variant domainnames to the primary domainname.

A 301 redirect will tell Google that other domain names do exist but to only focus on the primary one. This will also apply any backlinks that go to a variant domain name to your primary one if someone links to a variant domainname by accident.

You can apply a 301 redirect using .htaccess.

Hope that helps.

PK