Hi everyone,

Just wanted to get some opinions on duplicate content. Matt Cutts seems to think its not a huge issue, but many SEO experts say its a huge issue.

My question is more in relation to what qualifies as duplicate and what are the worst forms of duplication. As I think some forms are just plain picky. I also believe that sometimes its best not to get too bogged down in this stuff and just focus on your content more than anything else.

Ok lets start:

1.) Mirror Domains both return HTTP 200 OK - Has anyone noticed significant benefits from using a 301 on 1 of these domain names?

2.) 2 URL's / Same Content - Two identical pages on the website both accessible through human friendly url's.

EG: www. mysite .com /my-example-url
EG: www. mysite .com /my-example-url-2

How bad is this?

3.) Domain concatenation

EG: mydomain .com
EG: www. mydomain .com

4.) URL Concatenation

EG: www. mydomain .com
EG: www. mydomain .com /default.aspx
EG: www. mydomain .com/

EG: www. mydomain .com /my-cool-article
EG: www. mydomain .com /my-cool-article/ (note trailing slash!)

I would be really interested in hearing your feedback and experience with these forms of duplication. Also if you could rate how critical each of the 4 points I mentioned (in your opinion) are, I'd really appreciate it.

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3 and 4 aren't much of an issue anymore. The trailing slash thing is something that bugs me a bit when I see it omitted. A trailing slash should be added to all URLs that follow a directory structure. I notice it missing from a lot of apps developed on RoR such as Twitter and whatever else is made on Rails.

Thing is too that Matt might be talking about it from the user point of view rather than from the webmaster's POV.

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We've got multiple domains pointing at the same website without any 301s or 302s.
The only downside is that you can find certain results spread across multiple domains ie. under .com , under .eu etc.,
When we finally relaunch with the new site design in the next couple of weeks we'll 301 all the extra domains to the main .com

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