Duplicate Content On Same Domain

Is duplicate content on the same domain penalized as well.

[powerfulponder]

Yet another duplicate content question. Do the duplicate content woes apply to duplicate pages on the same domain.

If I have 2 ways to view widgets number 1
1. example.com/search-widget/widget1.htm
2. example.com/list-widget/widget1.htm

The pages are exactly the same, just different folder aliases. Should I do the extra work and make all the links the same?

Thanks!

[edited by: ciml at 5:51 pm (utc) on June 8, 2005]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]

[imstillatwork]

yes.

[powerfulponder]

So you know for sure that the duplicate filter ignores the domain? Don't most sites have several ways to view the same product, where there are just variations in the query string.

[vordmeister]

With exactly duplicate content my understanding was that google would choose one and ignore the others. If both pages are on your own site, then I suspect only one would turn up in the serps.

If it was nearly duplicate content (lets say different template, same words) then you might expect an indented result for the second page under the first.

As for doing the work to make the linke the same - YES. No point spreading link chi where it will do no good.

[taps]

Don't risk a penalty. Set some decent 301 links and justify you site to use only one url for one article. My site had three different ways to one piece of content. And it sank with allegra in February. After fixing this and some other issues my site resurrected with Bourbon.

It's not much work to set redirects and to fix any potential dup content problem. But it can save your site.

[powerfulponder]

Thanks guys! It's the advise by experience that makes me feel more comfortable.

taps: By the way, when people say allegra and such, are they refering to PR updates or index updates? Is there a way to see when the past ones have occurred, perhaps a chart of some type.

[sublime1]

I agree with all that has been said, just another 1 or 2 cents...

Duplicates are a natural part of the web: most sites that serve www.foo.com also serve the same thing on foo.com. Mirror sites replicate content ... but are not always in synch or may be "the same" but not exactly identical. These kinds of duplications are normal, and, last I heard are perfectly fine in that Google just makes some quasi-random choice about which one to index and ignores others that are the same or similar. I believe the concensus is that there's no penalty for this, in particular, just that one page wins (so the others lose). If both are yours, presumably you don't care.

Then there are duplicates that are essentially "stolen" content. Someone says, hey, their site has lots of great content and is getting a lot of traffic and money, so I'll copy it and trick Google into thinking I am the authoritative source of this content. This is, of course, the worst possible kind of violation, and Google punishes it severely when it is able to identify the good and bad. Sometimes Google gets it wrong for a while and the bad wins. The word "hijack" comes to mind.

Then there's the squishy middle. Just for giggles, one might argue that *all* of Google's content is duplicate insofar as it copies data from other sites and repeats it on its own, right? Even so, it provides a useful service. There's a lot of slip on the slope between the direct copy and the useful reorganization of existing content :-)

[ramachandra]

“If I find duplicate content of my site in other website, what can be done? Is there any way to post about the duplicate content? Can we convince Google that we are the original content author?”

Can anyone please clarify

[taps]

Power: Yep, Allegra was an index update back in February this year.

More:
[webmasterworld.com...]

I'm not sure if there's any kind of update history. I haven't seen any.

[Johan007]

I got no reply from GoogleGuy when I ask about my queastion...There are legit reasons for duplicate content:

1. Accessible version or Text Only version or Low graphics Version
2. Printer Friendly Version
4. PDA (low graphics versions)

[taps]

yes there are reasons for dup content. However you should exclude those duplicate pages from being crawled.

[Brian]

My experience is that duplication within a site doesn't matter. Quite a lot of my pages have a slug of generic information. Google will spot the similar strings of text and elements, assess their proportion to the rest of the page, and, if they look too similar, simply drop one page from what it lists. I don't think there is a penalty, although I do enjoy fiddling with a page until Google accepts it as different from something related.

I can see why Google wouldn't want to count the same page twice in its algo, but I can't see why it would want to penalize. Doesn't make sense.

[econman]

There seem to be different opinions about the impact of having the same page of content located on two different urls (the original question).

I'm assuming that google is smart enough to ignore the duplication (they don't give you credit for more pages of than you really have) -- that's the easy part to answer.

What is not as obvious is whether there are some advantages to be gained by eliminating duplicate pages--by contriving to ensure that the page and the url are 100% identical for any given page of content, regardless of how a visitor reaches it.

At least on our sites, it is easier to provide duplicate pages as needed, each with a different url. It takes more effort to ensure that only one version of a page exists, no matter where this content needs to be located within the site, and there are other problems, as well.

For example, we use breadcrumbs at the top of the page, to help orient visitors and make it easier for them to retrace their steps. In order to prevent duplicate pages, the breadcrumb may need to suddenly change when they reach a page of content that relates to multiple portions of the site (at the end of a series of drill-down steps). From a usability perspective it would be nice to keep the breadcrumb familiar and consistent, but I haven't figured out a way to do that if the content has to reside on a single url regardless of how it is reached by the visitor.

Has anyone tested to see the impact of duplicating pages, versus contriving to ensure that the url is identical for that content, regardless of how a visitor reaches it?

Has anyone searched for other threads on this topic and found any authoritative posts which might help clear up this issue?