Is google dropping duplicate pages within sites?

[TomJ]

I've heard about G punishing websites for duplicating content on other domains but what about within your own site.

example:

I have a site and on a lot of the pages there are a lot of "related/popular searches" links.....100 ish....everything on the page is the same except the content returned by the search results.

Could this be a reason why over 50% of the site has been dropped?

Sorry if this has been answered elswhere already!

Please can someone give any pointers?

Tom.

[DerekH]

In the rare occasions when I've moved a page's address and made the old page disappear, Google has often found the new page (probably because I referred to it on a What's New page) long before it discovers that the old page has gone.
One page (not always the one I want) is flagged as a duplicate, and only one page appears in the search results, because of course, both the new page and the previously indexed page have the same content.

In time, it sorts itself out, of course. But yes, during that changeover period, Google does indeed see duplicate content within a site, and handles it more or less the best it can.
DerekH

[idoc]

Google has openly acknowledged they refrain from "hand-to-hand" spam fighting whenever possible. Just my two cents... G isn't going to change because some spam gets in. Page one is always usually spam or cloaked content. If the other guy has 100 pages, get a copy of dbtoweb tweak the template to suit yourself, get a database and an online atlas, import 10000 fields and generate 10000 pages. You already know it works. Not doing it won't keep G from indexing a bit of spam. ;)

[g1smd]

>> Is google dropping duplicate pages within sites? <<

Yes. I would hope that is exactly what they are doing.

[nuevojefe]

DerekH,

I think he's referring to pages being dropped from the index, not just not appearing for rankings.

As far as I've seen, only one page will rank as DerekH suggests, but usually i've seen both pages stay indexed.

[jez_kewler]

Definately yes - google detects dupes within a site...

I saw single pages being "dropped" (no header, no title, no nothing) on a 7k page site ... of course only 1 page was copied 5 times... 4 of them are "url-only" listings now.... the rest of the site is fine...