If you type prolog.com into your browser you’ll come on a landing page that states “This page is shared by two independent and unrelated companies” and splits the landing page right down the middle. GD California gets the top half and Prolog Development Center get the bottom half.
Prolog.com actually forwards you to a subdomain of GD California with the url GDCA.com and the split page above is presented. My original thought is that there had to be some type of lawsuit that forced them to share. Otherwise why would the owner of prolog.com share the use of their site? I did a little Google searching and I didn’t find any real answers as to why two companies from completely different parts of the world would sit down and agree to split a domain down the middle………but I think it’s great that they did.
I think it’s a great idea. Taking a good domain and sharing it. In this case it’s not for SEO value as it’s merely a forward, forwarding to GD California’s website. It’s merely for people that type in prolog and gives them the ability to put prolog.com on their marketing materials which I would imagine gives them some credibility in the prolog world. The companies are complementary, with one making the boards and the other providing applications yet they don’t seem to be owned by the same people.
One can only guess the relationship between the two companies but whatever it is, I think it’s a good business move. The trend right now is to show different landing pages for different ip geo locations but that is only good for localized cities? I guess you could put them all on the front page and then let the visitor decide which company they’d like to visit. I’d be willing to be that most people would eventually visit them all just out of curiosity.
Could this be the future? Competitors pooling their money for the good of all. I doubt it, but I do believe we’ll start seeing more of this.
Interesting find. I agree with your idea that by sharing the domain they both may have seen an increase in traffic based on the marketing efforts of 2 companies channeling to one portal.
The downside of this arrangement is if one company gets or starts to get the majority of the click-throughs on the landing page. A heat map of the clicks would an interesting insight on how this works out.
Either way, nice post.
Here’s another example of two German companies sharing a domain: http://www.simply.de/
It was originally owned by the contact lens manufacturer, who some years ago obviously came to some kind of agreement with a newly founded cell phone provider.
it’s a great idea but it’s a horribly poor page.
This reminds me of what Rick once did with eRealEstate.com and also the MLB.com site that was once a law firms domain who had so much baseball traffic that they linked it to Major League Baseball and eventually MLB was smart enough to buy it.
Also paint.net – even if not exactly the same situation.
Looks like the domain is owned by the California company, so I’d guess that the German company threatened a suit or udrp but Prolog is a TM of Motorola, not of GD California. http://www.gdca.com/product-list.asp
Registrant:
GD California, Inc.
1799 Portola Avenue
Livermore, CA 94551
US
http://www.iwhois.com/prolog.com