301 & duplicate title tag

[Andrew Starr]

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When 301 redirecting a page is it OK to use the same title tag?

e.g. say I have a page mysite.com/dingledodies.php with the title tag 'Russell Howard Dingledodies'
and I change the page to mysite.com/russell-howard-dingledodies.php and 301 redirect to the new one, is it OK to use the same title tag 'Russell Howard Dingledodies' or should it be changed to something like 'Dingledodies - Russell Howard' so that its not the same?

I know we should avoid duplicate title tags, but if the old page no longer exists and 301 redirects to the new page, does this still apply?

Its not that title btw, just an example

[tom991]

I believe it should be Ok to use same Title tags for a 301 redirect.

According to a contributor on Google WM Central,
"Technically, Google should "see" the redirected page - it's meant to get the 301 instruction, along with a destination .... then toddle of and crawl the destination - completely ignoring the origin page."
Duplicate Tags in two files, one of which is 301 redirected.

Also, Google WM Central: Duplicate content, or 301 redirects does not mention tags.

If there are any duplicate Title tag issues, then it would be possible to check in GWMT > Content Analysis

You can also specify prefered page using canonicalization, but should not be required for a 301.

[Andrew Starr]

thanks for the info tom, I thought it should be OK, but just wanted to make sure.

I was checking in webmaster tools and noticed a few pages with duplicate titles and then realised that I had forgotten to 301 redirect these pages, so google was indexing both new and old and result was site wide penalty. hopefully it will come back in a few days now the issue is fixed

[gadget]

What about duplicate content? Would it be ok to use the content from the original site on the new site without getting a duplicate content slap?