Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · Indexing
In Day 2's lightning session on duplicates and site moves, a community speaker presented the consolidation of two competing loan-comparison sites into one brand. Every URL of both domains was compared on traffic, conversion, backlinks, revenue and rankings and given one decision: keep, merge or remove; pages that served the same search intent were merged into one strong article, taking the site from over 2,000 URLs to about 100. An old URL got a 301 redirect only when a new page served the same intent, and removed URLs were never redirected to the homepage. The speaker reported traffic growth from the first day and revenue up 100% month over month (the speaker's figures). A second speaker advised agreeing what to keep and retire with an owner for every decision, reviewing it with data and prioritising by business value, not only traffic. Author’s view: return 404 or 410 for removed URLs, as Google's site move guide says; for a site of about 2,000 URLs the crawl-budget gain is likely minor, and the benefit of pruning more plausibly comes from one strong URL per intent and consolidated signals.
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A community speaker set three goals before any technical work on a two-site consolidation: lower costs (infrastructure, maintenance and content paid for only once), one strong brand focused on one specialization, and a simple structure instead of hundreds of similar URLs competing with each other.
Speaker Martyna AğanoğluIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
In a community case study, every URL of both domains was exported, compared on traffic, conversion, backlinks, revenue and rankings, and given one of three decisions: keep, merge or remove.
Speaker Martyna AğanoğluIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
A community speaker's test for keeping a page during a consolidation was whether it had real potential to make money and really fitted what the business does; pages that failed were removed.
Speaker Martyna AğanoğluIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
In a community case study, the kept pages that shared the same search intent were merged into one strong article each, taking the merged site from over 2,000 URLs to about 100, a cut of about 95% of URLs.
Speaker Martyna AğanoğluIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
In a community case study, an old URL got a 301 redirect only when a new page served the same intent; URLs with no same-intent match were removed with an error status instead of being redirected (the exact code is unclear in the recording).
Speaker Martyna AğanoğluIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-CAN-10
A community speaker reported that revenue grew 100% month over month after the consolidation (the speaker's figure, period not stated), although the site had been cut from over 2,000 URLs to about 100.
Speaker Martyna AğanoğluIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
A community speaker credited a consolidation's success to doing everything at once: one clear topic, visible expertise instead of an anonymous content factory, and crawling spent only on pages that matter, growing through quality rather than more content.
Speaker Martyna AğanoğluIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
A community speaker's four tips before mapping a migration: agree what to keep and retire with an owner for every decision, review what to retire with data, prioritise by business value and not only traffic, and set expectations with an owner to escalate to.
Speaker David Carrasco PamiesIn Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site MovesEvidence transcript
For URLs removed in a consolidation, return 404 or 410: Google's site move guide names those two codes, and Google's crawlers treat every 4xx code except 429 the same way, as content that does not exist, so the choice between them matters less than not redirecting to an unrelated page.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site Moves
Google's crawl budget guide is written for sites with over a million pages changing weekly or over 10,000 pages changing daily, so for a consolidation of about 2,000 URLs the crawl-budget gain is likely minor; the benefit of pruning such a site more plausibly comes from one strong URL per intent and consolidated signals.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 12:05 · Lightning session E: Managing Duplicates and Site Moves
In a community case study, an old URL got a 301 redirect only when a new page served the same intent; URLs with no same-intent match were removed with an error status instead of being redirected (the exact code is unclear in the recording).
Google's closing suggestions on duplication: use redirects for site migrations, use HTTP result codes, don't block agents, check your rel=canonical links, use hreflang links to help Google localize, report weird canonicals in the forums, make secure pages that work, and keep canonical signals clear.
Redirect an old URL only to a page with the same intent, and return 404 or 410 when there is none
Rests on 7 claims, 1 of them in this topic