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

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 30, 2026

Jan 30, 2026 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Rank Volatility Heated, AI Overviews To Send Less Traffic, Opt Out Of It, Yahoo Scouts & Bing AI Performance Report

Jan 30, 2026 - 8:01 am
Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Volatility Super Heated January 29 & 30

Jan 30, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Tests Third-Party Endorsement Content On Search Ads

Jan 30, 2026 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Adds Preferred Sources Help Docs

Jan 30, 2026 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Review Appeals No Longer Delayed

Jan 30, 2026 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Should Google Hide the Toolbar PageRank Score?