301 Redirect: Google vs. Yahoo

[JohnKelly]

I've got a site which has two domain names which point to the same content. Domain1.com was registered in 1995, and Domain2.com was registered in 1998. Their respective stats are:

Domain1.com
120,000 pages indexed in Google
80,000 pages indexed in Yahoo
Home page has PR of 4 (down from 5 a month or so ago)

Domain2.com
195,000 pages indexed in Google
3,000 pages indexed in Yahoo
Home page has PR of 5 (down from 6 a month or so ago)

Domain1 receives about 3 times the amount of traffic as Domain2.

Since the vast majority of referrals come from Yahoo, I suspect that Google may be penalizing for duplicate content. I would like to institute a 301 redirect to avoid this but there are several problems in my mind:

1) Which domain should 301 redirect to which? I prefer Domain2 since it is used on all print media, etc., but Domain1 gets more traffic and I don't want to lose that.

2) From reading this forum and others, Yahoo does not like 301 redirects. Since most traffic (at least right now) comes from Yahoo, I don't want to lose their referrals. Should I do a condition redirect if the HTTP_REFERER comes from Yahoo? Or not bother with redirect at all?

Ideas?

[DaveAtIFG]

I'm confident that you will encounter duplicate content problems eventually so I think you better do something! :)

A conditional redirect is probably a poor long term solution since it could be construed as cloaking.

Although it's widely reported that Yahoo has problems with 301s, my experience has been just the opposite. Several redirected pages implemented both shortly before and shortly after the new YST was deployed have been indexed as expected.

Which domain should 301 redirect to which?

A cost/benefit study will answer this one I think. Is it cheaper to revise your print media or to give up the domain with the higher traffic? Not very attractive choices, I admit...