I have 2 pages in my website which are identical This occured because I had already a lot of Links to the index page and then added a page with a major searchterm as the forward slash to the second page and then created alot of links to that page. What are the consequences if any of having 2 totally identical pages in a website ?
Duplicate content can occur within a site, or across different sites. A page can be considered duplicate without being identical, Search engines want to publish only one version of particular content in their index.
Well, I guess its kind of a good thing if you are publishing something and you don't want someone to copy it.
So to rephrase my question is there any negative consequences from Google or other search engines if you have 2 completely identical pages in a website ?
I think it can hurt you a little. Why? First, your internal linking scheme will not focus all attention on the important link. So it will promote both links, each with half of the available power. Should I say more? Probably you'll get the results in the lower pages in the "nested style" we all know.