Cloned Site

[KevinH]

From a white hat standpoint, is it okay with Google if an SEO creates a “replica of the client’s site using a proxy server.” “The replica would be used to test the impact of changes (ie html headers) internally and via the search engines before migrating to main site.

The duplicate site would be hosted on the SEO’s servers.

Any guidance you can provide would be much appreciated.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

I think if the site is crawled (which sounds like the whole purpose), and G sees duplicate content you will be dinged.

[gabs]

Your test will not work as you can not test to identical doc's at the same time you need to test on a live site..

One reason many of us have more than one site is to use them a test sites..

Say a site you have is a personal blog and something and you make $100 a year for adsense then this site could be your test site as the only loss would be your adsense income.. But its up to you / client to run tests on main sites..

Good luck and keep testing imho..

[Phoenix]

I think this is probably not a good idea. If you test internally which a lot of people do, but don't let the search engines spider the content, then you will be fine. But don't risk your clients rankings by doing something like that!