I know that Google simply hates duplicate content and penalize websites heavily because of this. One of my websites is a database website where some pages are very similar.

Seems like Google is returning soft 404 errors for this:

This is the first time any of my websites have returned this error and it worries me! There is one important page that is included in this error list and it seems it has been de-listed from the Google index. It was showing up on the first page before. I have changed the page around but Google has not picked it up yet.

Here’s what I plan to do.

I will change as many of these pages around as I can. For many pages, they are automatically generating when I add something to my database list so I will put a code in so Google won’t index those pages. I rather have less pages indexed than have a bunch of 404-like content errors. Of course Google will take time to update these pages. If anything happens meanwhile, I’ll be back on to update this post.

If you have experience 404-like content errors, please comment on how you’re fixing them or if your site was penalized.

UPDATE: I went ahead and added a robots.txt file disallowing indexing of one of my website directories. This should eliminate many future 404-like content pages because this was the directory it was held in. I will keep updating with results as they come.