If you google "banana republic" you get the result below that shows both bananarepublic.com and bananarepublic.gap.com
Both sites seem to be identical. Does anybody know how to accomplish this?
I have a good domain name I want to show up in search results but I also want to take advantage of my current domains authority by using a sub domain.
Technically speaking, bananarepublic.gap.com is a CNAME for www.bananarepublic.com via www.bananarepublic.com.edgesuite.net so these are the same site. www.bananarepublic.com appears to redirect to bananarepublic.gap.com using a 302.
There is a canonical tag in bananarepublic.gap.com <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.gapfactorystore.com" /> which confuses me since there is no real site on www.gapfactorystore.com.
This appears to be a bit of a trick that I would not recommend. It could bite you in the end and I am not sure there is an advantage- short or long term. I would prefer one site that ranks well rather than saturating the SERPs with a junk domain that would only dilute the results.
Best to not worry about this or try to copy. Fall back to the "is it a good user experience" mantra.
Two identical sites ranking #1 & #2? That there is stinky for users. And when Google figures out they are showing that, they'll definitely kill it.
And while they shouldn't then punish BR for it, what's to stop them.
