Can I merge my 3 Sites together without Adsense considering duplicated

[Isa_Al]

Hello

I have 3 sites at the moment about sports news and each site is about a team, but now I am considering to merge my 3 WordPress sites into one new site so it will be more efficient for me in terms of managing and hosting cost because my sites grew now and I get like 1M visitor a month.

But I am afraid if I do so, Google Adsense will consider my new site a plagiarism or duplicated content site which is against their TOS.

So not to get into trouble I wanna make sure if it is allowed or what should I do? I read that there is a way to merge my sites together and let Google know about it like through redirect request in my webmaster's tools or something like that.

So any suggestions?

[tangor]

Short answer is YES, you can merge the sites into one. Longer answer you will want to keep the redirects from the old sites to the new one in place at least FOREVER, or if too much ... a year. There are many threads here at WW which discuss the many ways possible. A general read of the Apache forum will provide a great deal of information.

[lucy24]

plagiarism or duplicated content site

Another way of looking at it: it's only Duplicate Content if the same content can be reached via more than one URL, whether those multiple URLs are on the same site or different ones. (You did mention WordPress, so make sure each of your “pages” can only be reached one way.) If all URLs that used to contain {content A} are redirected to new URLs which now contain {content A}, there can be no duplication.

[Isa_Al]

@tangor Thanks for your reply, but my main concern is about Adsense's point of view regarding duplicated content or such stuff.

[Isa_Al]

@lucy24 thanks for your reply! so you mean I have to redirect each page to its new URL, or jus the site as a whole to the new site?

like if I have oldsite.com/post1 one should it be redirected to newsite.com/post1 or just redirect all the pages of my old site to my new site's homepage?

[lucy24]

or just redirect all the pages of my old site to my new site's homepage

Nooooooo.

What good would that do your users?

[tangor]

Beware the soft 404 and the resulting penalties.

Don't over think this. What I said was yes you can do it. Do it the right way. Make the other three disappear into the fourth NEW site with redirects and don't worry about adsense as it will EVENTUALLY follow. (Taking a hit along the way AS IT ALWAYS DOES, remember G is not your friend, never has been and you are not promised an income.)

If you fear any adsense loss then DON'T DO IT. Remain static, legacy, and lost. Up to you.

[not2easy]

Because the OP stated that these are WP sites, it is not as simple as moving a folder of html files to the new site. It will pretty much mean that each "old" post or page will need to be recreated on the new site - or on the one older site that you intend to keep.

You can easily export the .sql files from each site, but you can't just import that into an existing database. IF all 3 sites have the same URL syntax settings (Permalinks) it will work smoothly and maintain URLs, but the timeline will change and the post/page #s and attachment IDs will be new. You'll need to maintain the URL structure you are using in order for redirects to work. If your skills are excellent it can be done, but it isn't a simple change.

IF you are able to keep the same URL except for the "example.com" part of the URL, then it is fairly simple to redirect each old page to each new page. As luy24 says - do not redirect to the home page. Google really does not like that, calls it a soft 404 because visitors don't see what they wanted to see. Clicking on a link to a page about example.com/weather/rainstorms/ should never take a visitor to a home page. That is one of the things that can make combining sites more trouble than benefit.

It isn't duplicate content that might cause problems unless you decide to combine 3 into one and keep all 3 online.

[tangor]

Yikes! OP and all, I was a bit harsh, overlooked the WP aspect which is immense and ran my mouth. While comments do apply, the WP aspect just makes it even more nonsense to merge. :) <--that is a SMILE. Do the work and get it done!

Build the Fourth new and go from there. Create new content and, where applicable, link the old to the new ... then make the old disappear over time. Works a treat. Just takes time.