Duplicate Content Penalty

[malcolm60616]

Can any SEOs please elaborate on the notion of duplicate content penalty, I remember Vanessa Fox talking about this, but I need verification.

Is there a Duplicate Content Penalty?

Thanks guys.

[bobitza]

The "penalty" is that the pages get thrown in the supplemental index.

Check here .

[incrediblehelp]

No penalty at all. It is just a filter.

[Tubby]

This example may may not be typical

I have two sites with different content, restored-classics.com and restored-classics.com

The content is different on both sites, one carries adverts for car the other locations and vehicles, but the Index page was the same. I used to upload the same main page (laziness) - I did this for several years.
After the last Google 'rearrangements 'my non listed site stopped being ignored and even was allocated a pr rating of 1. (Google seemingly deducted 2pr point from one page and allocated 1pr point to the duplicate

Last week I was having some trouble with my data base. so To keep users happy, I uploaded all new input to the restored-classic.com non main page, I picked up a temporary stats counter just to see if users from my main page were following the link to the non listed page. My stats are large and far to complicated for me to keep track of individual pages that I though were dead. . So I was very surprised to find about 20 users a day entering the site via the duplicate page daily from Yahoo. (I had previously ignored this page because I presumed it was being ignored)

I have since placed a redirect from my data base site to this page, so traffic from directly from Yahoo is not so easily distinguished.

I think that there is not a hard and fast rule. I DO NOT recommend duplicate pages but if during the course of your daily web mastering it occurs, it probably will not a total disaster.

It may simply end up being preferred by Yahoo - ( different incoming link structure? )

I do not know if any one else has come across this phenomenon before. . But I did observe it.