Combining Thousands of Duplicate Pages Without Penalty

Aug 8, 2007 - 9:34 am 1 by

What happens if you have two identical sites with thousands of duplicate pages (18,000, to be more exact) indexed on both domains by search engines? Should you combine the pages so that there's no penalty for duplicate content?

This is the question at Cre8asite Forums. One of the sites is a PR7 .com and the other is a PR6 .gov.

There's a mixture of responses for this one. Some people say that it's okay to 301 redirect all pages from the site that gets less traffic to the site that gets more traffic. Consequently, the traffic will double and the keywords will be ranked better.

But others say that you shouldn't do a thing. However, in the event that you do get penalized for duplicate content, you should have a backup plan.

What would you do? Would you 301 redirect the pages or would you casually wait until your rankings plummet?

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: June 8, 2026

Jun 8, 2026 - 10:00 am
Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Volatility This Weekend - Around June 6th

Jun 8, 2026 - 7:55 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

New Google Document On Third-Party SEO Tools, Services & Advice

Jun 8, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Updates Its Hiring An SEO Doc Warning On SEO Tools & AI Optimization

Jun 8, 2026 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Search Profiles Insights & Analytics

Jun 8, 2026 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Bing Gives Searchers A Way To Disable AI Copilot Answers

Jun 8, 2026 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Should Google Hide the Toolbar PageRank Score?