I got a website with unrelated topic , but with 1600 backlinks (having a PR of 4) and one with 80 relatd back links having a PR0 ... and when I duplicated the content... guess what , the one with unrelated content came in front of the one with related content!!!!! then I changed the words, and only let in the title!!! search google for 'paid php scripts' and you will find redhits.com #80 , but softgroups.com nowhere! so , what's the deal?!
I would say the deal is that you made a site with duplicate content. The way the search engines are working right now that would cause the problem. Why would you want another site with the same content? Part of making a site and gearing it towards better rankings is have complete unique content or you will have some trouble.
i said that ... one got irevelant backlinks, and the other revelant backlinks , and the one with IRELANT links was in front of the one with REVELANT links.
So the question is why the one with the unrelated content is above the one with related content? Answer is a link is a link. Only reason related content helps is because you get targeted traffic to your site. No one goes to Tims Tire Website then jumps over to Tiffanys Tulips to buy some flowers. Well I cant say no one does. I think I dont understand the question still though. Do both sites have the same content?
The had it , but google really don't care about duplicated content? Why? because 1.theyre is nothing what others can do in order to get you down of serps... and 2. they can't know who fist published the original document?! what about news feaders and so on?! google bot really don't care, google only ban people if they are alerted by some people that some xxx pages are doing copyright violations, that's all ,got me?!
or if you are reported of spam, bleah bleah bleah now redhits.com got little content only 2 lines! the title and one head line that's all , softgroups got more!