06-20-2012, 10:46 AM
Sandbox is not a myth. If you go overboard on seo with a new site, it will end up penalized. I have seen this happen. As far as duplicate content is concerned, if you are using the same content on more than 1 of your own websites, both sites will have that content thrown out of the index. If someone else is stealing it, google should pick the original source to show in the serps. If someone else's site is outranking yours for the content, then you need to ask that person to take it down. If they don't, you can complain to google. If the duplicate content is on your own site, it won't cause a penalty, but google will have to choose which page to show. You should use rel canonical on all duplicate pages.