I hate being in over packed elevators, don't you? Now, imagine if the elevator comfortably fits 8 people, but you are in it with a total of 10 people. Now imagine if 9 of the other people are clones of the same person. Would you find that fair? Would you find it crazy and unwarranted?
That is the way some SEOs and webmasters feel about a topic in the search field named "Multiple Domains Crowding."
It is basically the process of a webmasters or SEO owning multiple domains and web sites, that target the same query phrase. They are hoping to crowd the first page of search results with only their web sites, this way if a consumer clicks on the first result and decides not to buy there, they can then click on the second or third or forth and buy from that site. The money and traffic all goes to the same place.
A WebmasterWorld thread has complaints from some SEOs about this practice.
The truth is, this has been going on since before Google even existed. But that being said, there has not been strong spam prevention algorithms to block this from happening. Outside of the duplicate content algorithms, it is believed that even if a different site is owned by the same owner, both have a strong opportunity to rank well.
Reseller at WebmasterWorld wrote:
For example a kind WebmasterWorld member has sent me some search queries related to niche "Assisted Living" which illustrated how at least 3 different domains of same owner are within top 10 results of first page of Google Serps for the same search query. Such spam method is pushing possible valuable sites of honest webmasters out of top ranking on Google Serps.And I don't see any effect on Multiple Domains Crowding spam by current Google algo rollout which Matt Cutts has announced recently, unfortunately.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Image credit to BigStockPhoto for crowded elevator
