Post date: Oct 24, 2016 1:24:29 PM (updated 2023)
Zoopla Ltd and Digital Property Group (owners of Primelocation .com - I'm not hyperlinking to the sites in question) merged in 2012. Zoopla .co.uk & primelocation .com may be considered 2 of the major online property portals in the UK in 2017.
According to Semrush .com, zoopla .co.uk is in the top 2 organic search competitors of primelocation .com with them ranking for 35.5K phrases in common in the top 100 results on google.co.uk. This to me is a gaping hole in the Google algorithm...
Both domains are registered to 'Zoopla Property Group Limited' without identical registration details and are not on the same IP address.
Zoopla .co.uk & primelocation .com may be considered to be 'Doorway pages' i.e. one of “multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination.” See https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311?hl=en.
They appear to use the same property reference numbers in URLs and the property listings shared between the sites also have duplicate content e.g.
http://www.webconfs.com/seo-tools/similar-page-checker/ states that http://www.primelocation .com/for-sale/details/43343958?search_identifier=de4d2fd711be6a15463979ed1584722e
is 41% similar to
http://www. zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/43343958?search_identifier=a7581a04ff7fe39b6a37a835bef2aa71#Qbs6psukG02lvwjJ.97 . This is still the case in 2023 (7 years later).
Other sites use the same Google Analytics ID as primelocation.com according to https://ewhois.com:
smartnewhomes .com
homes24 .co.uk
zoopla .com / .co.uk
homesoverseas .co.uk
Other examples exist in other sectors too. In my opinion, Google should be noting mergers & acquisitions (by reading the papers!), and adjusting search results accordingly to stop the 'colonisation' of search results with 'doorway pages'.
I've seen a presentation from a SEO company whose founder worked at Zoopla Property Group Limited - the SEO success of Zoopla mainly involved acquiring many competitors' business and redirecting their domains (with all the backlinks) to Zoopla...