I've just released a refreshed version of an old site. Its been live a couple of months and has retained the position #1 that the old site had....however due to the business structure I have to keep repeating myself - we do the same thing for very different audiences - each of which has its own section of the site...so I'm rewriting the accommodation pages/course pages with these audiences in mind - to avoid looking like duplicate content....but it is so very tedious and is getting me down!
So the question is, how much duplication is too much as far as search engines are concerned? - I've got to write 8 versions of the same accommodation pages...but there really is only so many ways I can talk about it without going insane! 
Brooke posted this at 13:39—8th March 2007.
She has: 681 posts
Joined: Feb 1999
Can you post the link? That would help me.
Megan posted this at 14:11—8th March 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
There is no specific percentage from what I've heard.
Here is a more extensive article on the topic:
http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/06/12/dupe-content/
Here is a tool that can analyze your content and show how much is duplicate:
http://www.seojunkie.com/2006/05/24/site-wide-duplicate-content-analyzer/
Megan
My web design blog
timjpriebe posted this at 19:18—8th March 2007.
He has: 2,666 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
Of course, that second link does not currently have the tool available, unfortunately.
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
Megan posted this at 20:06—8th March 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Oh, sorry about that. I thought that was a download link under the screenshot. Was in a bit of a rush when I posted that
Megan
My web design blog
Megan posted this at 16:34—12th March 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Here are some more articles that might help you:
How to Solve Keyword Cannibalization - what happens when a lot of pages on your site are trying to target the same keywords; how to direct your link value to key parts of your site, rather than distributing it among many. One strong page is better than many weak pages.
Get Your Blog Out of Google's Supplemental Result Hell (from SEO Book) - key points on reducing repetitive site content and "garbage" links (how to make your unique content stand out)
Illustrated Guide to Duplicate Content - overview of the duplicate content issue; includes some brief comments on the percentages you asked about.
Megan
My web design blog
webchat posted this at 15:15—5th April 2007.
They have: 15 posts
Joined: Apr 2007
I don't think it's as simple as saying "this page uses 60% of the content from that page". I believe Google (and in particular you have to worry about Google) has the ability to spot phrases of a dozen words or so and will then see if you have too many of them and so mark you down.
Why do I say that? Google now has a patent on phrases and plans to integrate phrase search technology along with page rank. They reckon they have amassed a set of 650,000 commonly used phrases.
Well, if they've done that, what other phrase analysis have they done? And think about it. Each of those phrases will be stored as a single number. So matching a single number to another single number is fast and easy for Google to do when spidering.
Therefore I doubt they look at the whole page and calculate a percentage. So even if you have 50% new content, your 50% old content could well trigger a flag. It's annoying but Google doesn't care much about the webmasters. They care about having good looking search results and if genuine webmasters lose rank they are just a casualty of ensuring the most popular search results for their users.
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Musson posted this at 08:50—20th April 2007.
They have: 74 posts
Joined: Dec 2006
I just know how tiring it could be, and this is the case when you care about Google and NOT your clients. Can you give a link to your site? To say something definite you have to see it.
julia_1 posted this at 17:23—1st June 2007.
They have: 6 posts
Joined: Jun 2007
Search Engines really hate duplicate contents, so always try to get fresh and unique content, best way is you write your own content.
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Lucy posted this at 10:11—9th June 2007.
They have: 28 posts
Joined: May 2007
Content Duplication is one of the serious problem. Some people are ignore of the further consequence of this issue.
There are online tools to find out this content duplication.
paladin2 posted this at 09:25—25th June 2007.
He has: 13 posts
Joined: Jun 2007
I heard that a content isn't considerated duplicate if it's less then 30% identical with the original content.
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Solommon posted this at 08:28—26th June 2007.
They have: 76 posts
Joined: Feb 2007
Really? Interesing information. How do you know about that? can you provide more information? It is interesting .
Megan posted this at 14:55—26th June 2007.
She has: 10,037 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Yes, I'd like to see a reference on that too. I've seen varying numbers there or that there is no set number or the range varies from 20-60% or something like that. And it would depend on where the duplication was etc.
Megan
My web design blog