Duplicate Content - A real worry if it occurs within a site?

[adbart]

Hello All,

OK I have a question that I have been completely unable to resolve myself. Let me explain the situation and perhaps some of you kind people will be able to come up with a suitable solution!

A website that I am currently re-developing has pages based in a directory called: http://www.example.com/pages/

Within this directory are pages like page1.php and page2.php that are currently included in the search engines with good rankings. Hence, the address to page1.php is: http://www.example.com/pages/page1.php

I plan to change the website however, and this includes the location pages are saved on the webserver.

So - in the new system, page1.php will now be located at the following address (this is unavoidable):

http://www.example.com/page1.php

(Hence, we have got rid of the /pages/ subdirectory).

Now, my problem is this - with the search engines ranking http://www.example.com/pages/page1.php, they will see http://www.example.com/page1.php as a completely new page altogether, and it will lose the SERPs that the previous address had.

Should I:

A) Bite the bullet. Change the page locations and let the search engines get 404 Not Found errors when they try to find the pages at the old URLs.

B) Redirect the search bots. Change it so that the page at http://www.example.com/pages/page1.php does a META redirect to http://www.example.com/page1.php.

C) Duplicate the content (effectively) by changing http://www.example.com/pages/page1.php to say "{include 'http://www.example.com/page1.php'}" so that visitors and the search bot are delivered the correct page. However, my understanding is that in doing this, I will be duplicating my own content, as to the browser, http://www.example.com/pages/page1.php and http://www.example.com/page1.php will be identical. Would I be penalised if I did this?

Please help if you can think of a good solution!

Ideally, I want to:

A) Seamlessly transfer the page to the new location.

B) Not harm the SERP of the page.

[mikesmith76]

From what i've read the thing to do in this situation is a 301 redirect, to inform the bot the page has moved. 301 is basically a html code for a page that has moved permanently to a new location.

How you do the redirect depends entirely on your setup, just DONT use meta refresh. You could use PHP with a 301 header, .htaccess etc....

Mike

[adbart]

I see... got any tips on doing a 301 header in PHP?

[incrediblehelp]

adbart just search here or google for 301 redirect tutorials. Their are plenty of them.

You place the code in your htaccess file like Mike said.

[mikesmith76]

php headers would work using

header("HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.example.com/");

but thinking about it if you're using apache .htaccess and mod rewrite would probably be the easiest way.
Just came accross this thread

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/444.htm

while searching google for 301 .htaccess.

Just make sure you tell mod_rewrite to redirect your visitors, and not simply rewrite the url. Otherwise your visitors will never find the new pages.

Should be useful to you

Mike

[adbart]

Don't use apache, the webserver in question uses IIS so it will have to be in the PHP.

Please advise!

Thanks

[adbart]

The plot thickens.....

I actually have rankings in the search engines for things like:

http://www.example.com/pages/page1.php?id=1

and

http://www.example.com/pages/page1.php?id=2

So.. if I just did 301 redirects on the page at the old location, I would lose the information in the URL headers! (i.e. the ?id=X) bit.

What can I put in the PHP code in the 301 php file that will pass the URL headers to the new address?

Thanks for the help!

[LogoGem]

I ran into the same problem... I had a page that was ranked number one in most search engines for my keyword, but I switched from .shtml pages to .html pages.

I was worried about how this would change my placement if I just dropped the .shtml page entirely and put up the new .html one.

Like a dummy, instead of researching, I just put up duplicate content, one on .shtml the other on .html.

I was still ranked #1 with most of the search engines (They all still pointed to the .shtml version) - but I think Google frowned on me and completly dropped me. I'm not 100% sure that was why, but I can't figure any other reason.

This page helped me in fixing the problem: http://www.gnc-web-creations.com/301-redirect.htm

Seems to be working right, but I'm not sure how to get Google back now. Any suggestions? (Sorry to piggy-back) I'm still listed when I search for site:www.logogem.com and all my pages come up (even the .shtml page in question), but I have vanished from their listings under my keyword 'corporate internet branding'.

[JKomp]

duplicated content within the same site is not involved in the duplicate content penalty as far as i have seen.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by JKomp

duplicated content within the same site is not involved in the duplicate content penalty as far as i have seen.

right komp and it is not even really a penalty within the same site. What can happen is that one of the versions of the copied page(s) can end up in the supplemental index. Of course the issue here is when Google decides for themselves which page to put into here and sometimes it can be the wrong one (the one you actually want to have show up in the SERPs)!

[greeneagle]

Note the .htaccess file isn't set with the same accessability or functionability with all hosting companies, even on Apache servers....We need to note that is just not an all inclusive 301 solution.

Ken