There was an interesting question about why Google would only show one of two sites that are unique but can rank for similar queries in the same set of search results. John Mueller of Google said normally Google would show the two sites, even if they are similar, even if they have the same ownership. So it might be another issue.
The specific sites were not named, so it made it hard for John to answer. But I know of many sites that this can apply to. For example, a search on [Jordan Retro 9] brings up search results from both footlocker.com and eastbay.com - both owned by Foot Locker, Inc and both rank just fine.
The specific question came up at the 14:52 mark where the question was around why Google started to take two sites that have unique but similar content and not show one of those sites in the search results. Google instead hides the other site in the "omitted results" section.
Here is a screen shot of what he means by omitted results:
The specific question was:
I have a question about omitted results we published two large dot coms, horoscope and astrology, each with each own url in content teams. After ranking on the first page for astrology queries for multiple years in February last year only one of the sites began to show up for normal search results at a time. Whichever site has the highest ranking for a given query will show up, with the other site being classified as an omitted result. There's no duplicate content across links between the sites. I’m curious why this is happening.
John said without looking at the specific query and sites, it would be hard for him to know. He did say "usually with two websites if they're not completely the same then we would rank them individually, even if there is kind of like an ownership relationship there."
He thinks there may be something else going on and asked him to post more details in the Webmaster forums.
Here is what John said:
it's it's really hard to say without looking at the specific sites and looking at the specific situation.So usually with two websites if they're not completely the same then we would rank them individually, even if there is kind of like an ownership relationship there.
So from that point of view it might also just be something that is kind of not related to to what you're suspecting in that that our algorithms think that it's like the same site we should only show one of these at the same time.
I have seen situations where if there are large number of sites that are involved, a large number of domains that are algorithms might say well all of these domains are essentially the same content and we should just pick one of these to show rather than like all of these. But usually if if they're two websites and they're kind of unique in their own ways, then that's something where we would try to show them individually.
Here is the video embed:
Forum discussion at YouTube Community.
