Penalized for duplication?

[Paul78]

Hi there,

In February 2012 one my web pages (.co.uk) dropped from page 1 to page 5 for the keyword 'Menopause' and was replaced with a .PDF

Late January 2012 I launched a duplicate version of this webpage however targeting .ie due to difference currency and legalities, I had made sure in webmaster tools that both websites were both Geographically correct, I am also using hreflang tags on both webpages.

One thing that is strange is if I copy the first few paragraphs of the webpage in question into Google.co.uk, it's the .ie webpage that appears.

Any help would be appreciated in why this has happened.

Kind Regards

[Paul78]

Hi Stephen, The URL's in question are:

UK version:

http://www.avogel.co.uk/health/menopause/

Irish version:

http://www.avogel.ie/health/menopause/

Any help would be appreciated.

Kind Regards

[AJPro]

I have had the same happen to two of our sites. Same language, but different country and Tld.

Google ignores the hreflang element. We even made sure to include the country in the page title and in the footer. Since the we use country specific .tld we have no option and shouldn't need to set specific market in webmaster tools.

I guess it is just the way google works when you have two sites with basically the same content.

In our case we werent penalized, it's just that google think our foreign site is more relevant.

[firstconversion]

It could be anything in the entire world. needs more information - post the url

S