Two Different Domains exact same content

[techdesign]

Hello,

I suspect I know the answer to this but would like to have it confirmed.

I have been speaking to a company the last couple of weeks who have 2 domains with the exact same content. Possible a third but they haven't supplied a link.

This from all I've read would be a huge problem for ranking and SEO. What would be the best way to deal with this ?

I did do a search and found articles/questions on same content on the same site and in articles etc but nothing about exactly the same websites on 2 domains.

Cheers David.

[techdesign]

Upon a basic inspection using Google and keywords, neither site appears to be ranking, except for Google local business page.

And that is so far for only one specific keyword. Where one website shows and the others Google+ page does.

From looking at the replies and doing more reading on this I have 2 options.

1. Make 1 site the only site and redirect the others to it. Create landing pages for each suburb serviced with unique content

2. Recreate each site with unique content with a link to the other sites.

Essentially remove most if not all duplicate content (words and images)

Am I correct? And if the group wishes to keep the individual business names option 2 would be best ?

Cheers

[MarieHaynes]

There's a lot of stuff written about duplicate content that just isn't true.  John Mueller from Google has said several times that there is no duplicate content penalty.  However, if two pages have the exact same content, Google won't want to show both to the searcher.  They'll pick the most relevant one, or perhaps the one that Google has decided is the originator of the content and show that one.

So, if you have two sites that are identical, most likely one won't rank well.

[ColeLusby]

Hi,

I believe Alick300 may be misunderstanding what Matt Cutts is communicating. Cutts is communicating different domains in different countries in this circumstance.

Thanks,

Cole

[techdesign]

Its the same ccTLD. and it appears to be 2 or 3 different businesses, different domain names, run under a group business from 2 (possibly 3) different areas.

It appears that it may have been an attempt to link 3 businesses after a buyout.

But the content is simply duplicated across both working domains with no changes at all.

[Houses]

Hi,

If there's a reason to have both sites live then instead of a 301 (which would only show the content from one site) you could use a canonical (if the content can't be updated to something different enough) and chose the main of the two sites

[Alick300]

Hi David,

If same content using on different ccTLD like  then that won't be consider as duplicate content. I am sharing Matt cutts

video on this .Please watch once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNApwW2KdKQ&index=199&list=UUWf2ZlNsCGDS89VBF_awNvA

Thanks

[ColeLusby]

First, ask why they're doing this. If they're attemtping to rank for multiple locations. Change the content enough to be localized.

Second, if it's truly just duplicate content for no real purpose, then 301 redirect the domains to the domain with a higher "domain authority."

Find domain authority at opensiteexplorer.com.

[TheeDigital]

Sometimes this is done unintentionally, and there may be no ill-intent. Either way, one should be properly redirected to the other.