Page Moved in PHPBB forum: duplicate page issue

[smo]

Recently I created one different section in my phpbb forum and shifted some of the discussions to this new section. I left a copy in the original position. But now I am worried that I am not penalizing my site from duplicate content issue of google. Now definitely there is a duplicate copy of some pages as I left original copy in old place. I can’t add any redirection also as they are forum pages and one common file is used.

Should I delete the old locations and suffer page not found for some days ?

[idansh]

I dont think you should do that , just send an email to phpbb support and ask them for the right answer for that soecific issue.

[incrediblehelp]

You are not penalized for duplicate content. Google will more than likely pick one and not rank the new one. In this case the problem is they will probably continue to rank the old one which is not ideal for you. Again why cant you redirect from old to new?

[smo]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Again why cant you redirect from old to new?

It is a forum runs on PHPBB. So a common page collects threads from db. I have only moved some discussion thread to a new section which are focusing on a particular area.

So I can't place a header redirection.

I think this problem is very common in forums and here also I am seeing many threads moved to different sections.

My plan is to keep new and old threads for some time and then slowly delete the old threads.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by smo

My plan is to keep new and old threads for some time and then slowly delete the old threads.

Understood. Bite the bullet and delete the old ones now.