Value in Consolidating Similar Sites / Duplicate Content for Different URLs

[versare]

We have 5 ecommerce sites: one company site with all products, and then four product-specific sites with relevant URL titles and products divided up between them (www.companysite.com, www.product1.com, www.product2.com, etc).

We're thinking of consolidating the smaller sites into our most successful site (www.product1.com) in order to save management time and money, even though I hate to lose the product-specific URLs in search results. Is this a wise move?

If we proceed, all of the products will be available on both our company site and our most successful site (www.company.com & www.product1.com). This would unfortunately give us two sites of duplicate content, since the products will have the same pictures, descriptions, etc. The only difference would be the URL. Would we face penalties from Google, even though it would make sense to continue to carry our products on our company site?

[EGOL]

**We're thinking of consolidating the smaller sites into our most successful site (www.product1.com) in order to save management time and money, even though I hate to lose the product-specific URLs in search results. Is this a wise move? **

As a general answer, I would say that it is a wise move.  I my opinion, in most instances the only time that you should have two sites competing with one another is when you have one site that is a total dominant in its business niche and you have the time to build unique content on a second site.  Even then, it might be more profitable to spend that same effort adding additional products on your main site or launching a new site in a new niche.   Keep in mind that is a general answer and detailed study should be done to determine if closing some of your sites is a smart move.

If we proceed, all of the products will be available on both our company site and our most successful site (www.company.com & www.product1.com). This would unfortunately give us two sites of duplicate content, since the products will have the same pictures, descriptions, etc. The only difference would be the URL. Would we face penalties from Google, even though it would make sense to continue to carry our products on our company site?

If this was my company, I would be investigating the closing of four sites and doing 301 redirects to the one that remains (assuming that detailed study supports that and all of the sites are in superb health with great link profiles).

But you ask about duplicate content.  If you have that, then one site could be dropped from the SERPs.  If the two sites have links that connect them it is a very high probability that google will kill one.  Google started being able to detect that and kill one of the sites about ten years ago.

Disclaimer:  What I wrote here is generalized opinion.  Detailed information could change my mind... and I don't have time to do that type of evaluation even if the data was presented here.  Very time consuming.  If these were my sites I would make up my mind about this type of move over a period of months and not in a few moments.