I do not want to use a 301 redirect because my old site may have been penalized and is not performing well any more.
I want to phase out 1 site, and create a new site, with a new URL, and new hosting, but with the same content as the old site. I want to avoid any penalties from google by having duplicate content on 2 different sites. I don't care about people mistakenly going to the old site and not having a means of contacting me. So I was thinking of changing the content of site 1 (the old site) to read simply "under construction", and creating a new site with the same content that was on the old site.
I know there are other ways of changing URLs, forwarding, 301 redirect, and so on, but I specifically want to do it this way.
Do you think there will be any google violations in doing this? What if google has the content of the old site cached - so even if I change the content of the old site to read simply "under construction", the cached version will have the same content as the new site? Do you think this will pose any problems in terms of google organic search engine optimization? The new site will have basically the exact same content as the old one, but will be written in such a way that it won't violate any regulations.

Thanks for any help.

If it really has been "penalised" which I would seriously doubt, using a 301 would transfer the "penalty" on as well.

I would suggest that it is more likely to that whatever promotion has been done is now simply ineffectual. It does happen if you have followed the "get more links" "advice" and used link exchanges, directories etc. The inbound links may have been devalued and therefore your site takes a nose dive at the same time.

Genuine penalties are few and far between and you will KNOW why it is penalised.

Oh and

There are NO Penalties for duplicate content

http://www.modtalk.co.uk/article/c-a...tent-the-myth/

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...e-content.html

google does not Like duplicate content, sometimes it does not even index them. maybe you can wait till google deindex your old site? just my personal opinoin.