Duplicate Issue

[FrankSweeney]

Hello Mozzers!

We have a client going through a website revamp. The client is The Michelangelo Hotel, and they are part of Star Hotels. Star Hotels plans to create a section on their site for The Michelangelo, as opposed to maintaining a stand alone site. They will then take the michelangelohotel.com domain, and point it to the corresponding pages on the Star site. The guest will key in www.michelangelohotel.com, and will see the same content that can be found on www.starhotel.com/en/michelangelo-hotel-new-york.

The problem we have is this: Essentially the same content will be indexed twice, once on starhotels.com and once on michelangelohotel.com. This would seem to cause a duplicate content issue.

What are your thoughts?

Edit: I apologize, because I was not nearly clear enough here. The Star Hotels site will have 5 pages dedicated to The Michelangelo Hotel. The content will sit solely on that server as those 5 pages. Those 5 pages will each be indexed as 2 URLs.

www.michelangelohotel.com <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/

www.michelangelohotel.com/accommodations <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/accommodations

And so on.

Thanks!

[FrankSweeney]

Edit: I apologize, because I was not nearly clear enough here. The Star Hotels site will have 5 pages dedicated to The Michelangelo Hotel. The content will sit solely on that server as those 5 pages. Those 5 pages will each be indexed as 2 URLs.

www.michelangelohotel.com <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/

www.michelangelohotel.com/accommodations <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/accommodations

And so on.

[spencerhjustice]

If for some reason you don't want to redirect www.michelangelohotel.com then you can just add a meta robots tag in the header of every page that looks like this:

Although you said that they would point www.michelangelohotel.com to www.starhotel.com/en/michelangelo-hotel-new-york which would generally means that it is being redirected so anyone that types in www.michelangelohotel.com will end up at www.starhotel.com/en/michelangelo-hotel-new-york

[DeanAndrews]

If www.michelangelohotel.com will be pointed to www.starhotels.com/hotels/michelangelo/ then all you need to do is use a 301 redirect via the www.michelangelohotel.com htaccess file.

For example to redirect the location page:
Redirect 301 /en/location.aspx http://www.starhotels.com/hotels/michelangelo/en/location.aspx
Do the same for all pages on michelangelohotel.com

This is assuming that you no longer want www.michelangelohotel.com as a separate site as you have suggested. Anyone visiting the www.michelangelohotel.com directly or via a link will be redirected to the correct page on www.starhotels.com. The 301 also tells search eninges that the page has moved.