Duplicate content

[Ironside]

I know that in the past Google will punish you if there was duplicate content on the net. However, sometimes it's not easy to avoid it. I am changing domain names, however the content of the website will not be changing, it will just move from the old domain to the new domain. Therefore, I will have to utilise some 301 redirects. I'm hoping that Google will have the sense to realise that this is not duplicate content by intent, just because I need people to be able to find the new website until the propagation takes place properly.

Just wondering what your thoughts were on this?

[sozzled]

These are only my thoughts and they don't relate to Joomla per se.

There's a lot of hyperbole about "duplicate content" and what that means to different people (and what it means to Google) and whether or not Google will do "something" in the way of retribution for doing it. The number one problem with these "duplicate content" topics is that they fairly quickly turn into a rancid discussion among one-post "experts" some of whom will write "Google will punish you" or "Duplicate content is bad" or "Fake News: Google will punish you. Sad", etc. etc. etc.

Evidently everyone has their own opinion.

Therefore, as a word of caution, you'll probably find that this topic will digress into an continual barrage of "advice" (none of which will be helpful).

Having set the scene for the inevitable unfolding melodrama, here are a few thoughts that might be helpful.

1) From all that I've read I don't know to what extent Google will "punish" people for so-called "duplicated content".

2) If people are, in any way, concerned that they have content that's creating duplicate SERPs on internet search engines then they should look at ways to disavow (or otherwise contain) certain URL links on their sites.

3) To prevent internet search engines and site scrapers from accessing various areas of websites, investigate what you can do with the robots.txt file.

4) While you're in the process of changing to a different domain and, for a period of time while the two domains may "share" the same content, you could wait things out until the propagation of the new domain has settled down—usually within 48 hours or thereabouts. One "interesting" issue that occurred in my case—I don't know if this is relevant—is when I changed from HTTP to HTTPS; it took a few days for new references to propagate through the search engines.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, this isn't a Joomla issue per se. There will probably be a dozen or more one-post wonders who will advise you differently (and some of them will recommend Brand X redirection software or Brand Y SERP-souper-upper—perhaps we should call these things "SERPer-upper tools" (?)—and you're welcome to entertain or dismiss those suggestions as you choose). My own view is that the advice in Little Bo Peep is probably as good as any other.

Good luck. Cheers.