Privacy policy ( duplicate content)

Thanks, I can do that but from what I heard is Google "loves" or respects sites with privacy policies since it shows that the owner is concerned.. it is a myth but it makes sense.. so I don't know if I should get someone to do it..

Thanks, I looked it up and he charges 997$.. that is alot of money lol I know it could cost me alot more if someone sues me but I wanted someone to write a custom policy for me so its not duplicate

Really? thanks man .. where did you find the information? just curious

No doubt Google treats things such as privacy policies, terms of use and other such content differently then the main content of your site. The main concern with such pages is do they cover you legally as this is the reason they are there.

Up until the Google Panda update in early 2011 duplicate content and any penalty related to it did indeed relate to content duplicated on a single domain and not across different domains.

But post-Panda, Google have made it clear that they are now against the same content appearing on different sites too and will (as far as their algorithm is able) rank only the first instance that they find. Whether that 'first instance' is the first one they happen to see, or the first on to have been posted is a moot point.

However, as far as I am aware, having content on your site that Google thinks is duplicated is not against any rules and the only penalty that is likely to be imposed is that the page in question will not be ranked. Unless your site is comprised of a majority of such re-used content, having a page or two that don't get indexed (or more accurately, ranked) is neither here nor there and won't affect the reputation or authority of the rest of your pages.

To clear up another misunderstanding that I'm seeing here, putting a no-index, no-follow tag on your privacy page does not hide it from Google - Google can 'see' every page on your site that is reached by a link. All the no-index, no-follow thing does is tells Google how to treat your page. It doesn't stop them from knowing about your page, it stops them from ranking it - and is seen by Google to be a courtesy.

So, to cut a long answer a bit shorter: by all means use a privacy policy that appears on other sites - so long as you don't copy it without permission (that would breach copyright). And don't be tempted to rewrite it to make it 'unique' because firstly you don't need to, and secondly, rewriting legalese is a tricky business if you are not trained. Changing an odd word or nuance can render the whole thing legally meaningless if you are not careful.

Do use a legitimately sourced privacy policy and do set it to be no-index, no-follow.

Martin