I have a old pr4 site that I am trying to whip into shape. It has a lot (around 300) sub-pages many of which are like pr 2 or 3, but they are generated with a search query (that is they have a bot confusing ? in the url). Also its an image resource site and although the main googlebot seems to have no problems with my ? pages the google image bot cannot find them. I have reworked my php template to remove the ? pages but they will be gone! The site really doesn't generate and money. Should I just bite the bullet and implement the new template? Or should I put up both templates and risk being penalized for duplicate content? thanks for your ideas!
No,Never go for Duplicate Content. Sometimes search engine banned your site due to the reason of duplicate content.
There is no duplicate content penalty, it's a filter. Moreso, duplicate content has nothing to do with template design. The googlebot looks at the content.