Penalized for Duplicate File Name?

[RibaRiva]

Hello experts:

Here's what puzzles me:

Page one URL looks like this: example.com/directory/widget.htm

Page two URL looks like this: example.com/otherdirectory/widget.htm.

The content, titles and descriptions of the two pages are completely different. Page two deals with a different and more detailed aspect of page one (as indicated by the directory name).

Although page one is older, it has no PR and attracts very little incoming traffic despite some good external links. Page two is PR2 and ranks a little better for targeted KWs but not much.

I suspect that Page one is suffering some kind of penalty. Does that make sense? If so, perhaps I should change the file name of page two and 302 to the new page?

Thanks in advance for any random thoughts or ideas.

[rainborick]

This isn't a problem. Google indexes complete URLs, so they would consider the two URLs in your example as unique. Whatever is causing your ranking problems, it isn't the file name.

[RibaRiva]

Thanks. That's what I thought but I can't seem to come up with anything else.