Will our two retail sites get hit with duplicate content?

[klmarketing]

Our retail site just rolled out a second online store.  The URL is new and it is showing some of the same products from the same vendors (probably about 40% of the fist store is in the second store).  Down the road, we will remove the products from the first site, however, we are keeping it for now.  The products show up on both sites, with the same images, and the same descriptions and almost the same URL query string.  Are we going to get hit with any penalties due to duplicate content?

[matbennett]

You are definitely at risk of it, yes.   One of the main benefits of the duplicate content filters that google introduced was to stop people rolling out cookie-cutter sites of the same products in order to dominate the SERPs.  Whilst that isn't your aim the result is quite similar and you could therefore get penalised.

My fear would be a penalty that goes beyond just affecting the duplicate parts. This might be a particular concern on a new site.

You might be able to lower the risk of this by altering the mix:

• Can you lose any of the duplicate products for now?
• Could you just no-index them on the new site for now?
• If you can add new descriptions can you add something unique to the existing ones?
• Is there other unique content that you could add

[klmarketing]

Ive asked them to Canonicalize from the old site to the new site.... although... we have great rankings for some of the brands on the old site.