Dupe concerns, need a remedy

duplicate urls and mirror sites

[chadandrew]

First, let me give some background; when my site was first developed, someone I had hired to help me with placement, suggested that I create all pages in .html and .htm, for the search engines that preferred one over the other. So, all pages on my site are in .html and .htm, all duplicates.

For about six months now it has been this way. I have a PR4, and it does not seem to be a problem with Google. They seem to merge or can figure out that they are the same, and only list one of the two. Could it be possible that it is hurting my PR ranking with me not knowing it?

Second, I had two domain names when my site was created. Having nothing on the secong URL, I figured I would just upload this site there also. Now that I'm beginning to see the light, I'm hoping my prior ignorance will not hurt me. With the content be very close, the second site does not get updated regularly by me, if at all, and holds a PR3.

What I've done this week; I started freaking that this may have the possibilty of hurting my Google placement and PR. So I deleted all pages on the second site, and put up a temporary index page.

My plan is to delete all .htm pages on my main site and replace with 404's. Then, place a 404 on my second site, to redirect traffic to my second page temp. index.

Am I doing the right things here? I'd like to get this corrected before it wipes out all the hard work I've put into my site. If there's anything else, or something else I should be doing, please let me know. And thanks for helping me too see the light!

GoogleGuy- can I give you my site URL and you can put me in the "he's OK, he was just ignorant pile?"

Thanks in advance,
Chad

[Brett_Tabke]

You are on the right track. Although g is very good at spotting dupe content and reducing the pr on one site, I sure wouldn't want that dupe content out there.