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Question about duplicate content?

by trade4861
18 replies
Hi, I allow high quality guest post from users on my site. Before I ever approve a post I first check the web to make sure that no part of the content is posted anywhere else. Once Google indexes it I recheck the web in the event it was submitted to other sites. Today I noticed the writing was published to another site but on my site it was indexed 12 hours before the other site. My site is ranking for the content, theres is not. Does this still count as possible duplicate content since both were indexed so close together?

Or, what if they submit the content to a site thats more powerful than mine, will the content get ranked better on that site?
#content #duplicate #question
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by trade4861 View Post

    Does this still count as possible duplicate content since both were indexed so close together?
    This has nothing to do with duplicate content at all.

    This is content "duplicated" across different domains. That isn't "duplicate content". It's syndicated content.

    "Duplicate content" is multiple copies within one domain. (Yes, I know lots of people don't think it means that at all: they'll all wrong. It's endlessly clarified by Google but they choose to ignore that, or they're just unaware of it, or they're selling something that's a perceived solution to a non-existent problem and want their potential customers to believe that there's some sort of "duplicate content penalty" and that "syndicated content" is a form of "duplicate content" - all of which is wrong).

    The difference is explained here (and in many threads in this forum): Article Marketers – Lay the Duplicate Content Myth To Rest Once and For All - Internet Marketing and Publishing Blog

    Originally Posted by trade4861 View Post

    what if they submit the content to a site thats more powerful than mine, will the content get ranked better on that site?
    Yes, it may do so. You've acquired the initial indexation rights (and in the long run, if you continue to accumulate those, it'll be good for your SEO), but that doesn't necessarily mean that in any individual case, your copy will necessarily be the one that ranks.

    The SEO benefit of accumulating initial indexations is a collective one.

    If I start a brand new website tomorrow, post just one article on it and then submit the same article to Ezine Articles, then the day after tomorrow the copy in Ezine Articles will outrank mine. That copy will be the one indexed in Google's "main index" and my copy will be only in the "supplemental index". But that's temporary: by the time I've gradually done that another 6 or 8 times with another 6 or 8 articles, the copies on my sites will always be the ones that rank (including that first one), and the EZA copies will be nowhere in SEO terms - exactly as I need and want and intend (because I want people who look in Google to come to my site, and publishers who look for content can find it in EZA, where they look for articles to re-publish). This is well-known to article marketers, and of course is easily verifiable, too.

    From the author's perspective, what matters collectively is to accumulate the initial indexations.

    From your perspective, in this case, you've acquired that for your site (and as long as authors are willing to give you their work on that basis - which I admit I wouldn't! - you can continue to do that.). That's all you can do. If people re-publish those articles elsewhere, with or without your permission, in accordance with or breaching your terms of service, some of them may sometimes outrank you. Sometimes temporarily. If they're not allowed, by your TOS, to do that, you can serve DMCA notices on their hosting companies, if you really want to. But you'll have to prove to their hosting companies that you've acquired either the copyright or the sole online publishing rights, and that may not be trivially easy for you (and rightly so, in my opinion, if you'll excuse my saying so).
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    • Profile picture of the author trade4861
      Thanks for clarifying that, much appreciated.
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    • Profile picture of the author IMDealBox
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      This has nothing to do with duplicate content at all.

      This is content "duplicated" across different domains. That isn't "duplicate content". It's syndicated content.
      I see so many people getting confused in Syndication And Duplicate notions! Thx for explaining it once again!
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    • Profile picture of the author passiveincomebiz
      Alexa -- you must be tired of saying the same things with regards to article marketing and duplicate content -- over and over again

      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      This has nothing to do with duplicate content at all.

      This is content "duplicated" across different domains. That isn't "duplicate content". It's syndicated content.

      "Duplicate content" is multiple copies within one domain. (Yes, I know lots of people don't think it means that at all: they'll all wrong. It's endlessly clarified by Google but they choose to ignore that, or they're just unaware of it, or they're selling something that's a perceived solution to a non-existent problem and want their potential customers to believe that there's some sort of "duplicate content penalty" and that "syndicated content" is a form of "duplicate content" - all of which is wrong).

      The difference is explained here (and in many threads in this forum): Article Marketers - Lay the Duplicate Content Myth To Rest Once and For All - Internet Marketing and Publishing Blog



      Yes, it may do so. You've acquired the initial indexation rights (and in the long run, if you continue to accumulate those, it'll be good for your SEO), but that doesn't necessarily mean that in any individual case, your copy will necessarily be the one that ranks.

      The SEO benefit of accumulating initial indexations is a collective one.

      If I start a brand new website tomorrow, post just one article on it and then submit the same article to Ezine Articles, then the day after tomorrow the copy in Ezine Articles will outrank mine. That copy will be the one indexed in Google's "main index" and my copy will be only in the "supplemental index". But that's temporary: by the time I've gradually done that another 6 or 8 times with another 6 or 8 articles, the copies on my sites will always be the ones that rank (including that first one), and the EZA copies will be nowhere in SEO terms - exactly as I need and want and intend (because I want people who look in Google to come to my site, and publishers who look for content can find it in EZA, where they look for articles to re-publish). This is well-known to article marketers, and of course is easily verifiable, too.

      From the author's perspective, what matters collectively is to accumulate the initial indexations.

      From your perspective, in this case, you've acquired that for your site (and as long as authors are willing to give you their work on that basis - which I admit I wouldn't! - you can continue to do that.). That's all you can do. If people re-publish those articles elsewhere, with or without your permission, in accordance with or breaching your terms of service, some of them may sometimes outrank you. Sometimes temporarily. If they're not allowed, by your TOS, to do that, you can serve DMCA notices on their hosting companies, if you really want to. But you'll have to prove to their hosting companies that you've acquired either the copyright or the sole online publishing rights, and that may not be trivially easy for you (and rightly so, in my opinion, if you'll excuse my saying so).
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    • Profile picture of the author EmilyAbbott
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      This has nothing to do with duplicate content at all.

      This is content "duplicated" across different domains. That isn't "duplicate content". It's syndicated content.

      "Duplicate content" is multiple copies within one domain. (Yes, I know lots of people don't think it means that at all: they'll all wrong. It's endlessly clarified by Google but they choose to ignore that, or they're just unaware of it, or they're selling something that's a perceived solution to a non-existent problem and want their potential customers to believe that there's some sort of "duplicate content penalty" and that "syndicated content" is a form of "duplicate content" - all of which is wrong).

      The difference is explained here (and in many threads in this forum): Article Marketers - Lay the Duplicate Content Myth To Rest Once and For All - Internet Marketing and Publishing Blog



      Yes, it may do so. You've acquired the initial indexation rights (and in the long run, if you continue to accumulate those, it'll be good for your SEO), but that doesn't necessarily mean that in any individual case, your copy will necessarily be the one that ranks.

      The SEO benefit of accumulating initial indexations is a collective one.

      If I start a brand new website tomorrow, post just one article on it and then submit the same article to Ezine Articles, then the day after tomorrow the copy in Ezine Articles will outrank mine. That copy will be the one indexed in Google's "main index" and my copy will be only in the "supplemental index". But that's temporary: by the time I've gradually done that another 6 or 8 times with another 6 or 8 articles, the copies on my sites will always be the ones that rank (including that first one), and the EZA copies will be nowhere in SEO terms - exactly as I need and want and intend (because I want people who look in Google to come to my site, and publishers who look for content can find it in EZA, where they look for articles to re-publish). This is well-known to article marketers, and of course is easily verifiable, too.

      From the author's perspective, what matters collectively is to accumulate the initial indexations.

      From your perspective, in this case, you've acquired that for your site (and as long as authors are willing to give you their work on that basis - which I admit I wouldn't! - you can continue to do that.). That's all you can do. If people re-publish those articles elsewhere, with or without your permission, in accordance with or breaching your terms of service, some of them may sometimes outrank you. Sometimes temporarily. If they're not allowed, by your TOS, to do that, you can serve DMCA notices on their hosting companies, if you really want to. But you'll have to prove to their hosting companies that you've acquired either the copyright or the sole online publishing rights, and that may not be trivially easy for you (and rightly so, in my opinion, if you'll excuse my saying so).
      Thank you for your elaborated answer. I had some questions about that myself, and you just answered them all. :-) It will not solve my problem, but at least I now have a starting point.
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  • Profile picture of the author singhabhishek251
    I am so much overwhelm by this information, it's really good and today I understood about duplicate content.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rebeccha Haase
    This is content "duplicated" across different domains. That isn't "duplicate content". It's syndicated content.

    "Duplicate content" is multiple copies within one domain. (Yes, I know lots of people don't think it means that at all: they'll all wrong. It's endlessly clarified by Google but they choose to ignore that, or they're just unaware of it, or they're selling something that's a perceived solution to a non-existent problem and want their potential customers to believe that there's some sort of "duplicate content penalty" and that "syndicated content" is a form of "duplicate content" - all of which is wrong).
    Hey Alexa, Thanks a lot for your clarifications. I myself was not sure about this duplicate content fact. So according to this, if I copy some blog post from some other people's blog and paste it in my blog, it will not harm my blog?
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Just be careful what you have for lunch.

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  • Profile picture of the author dbrwn
    The thing about duplicate content is that it isn't in violation of anything. Of course you're going to find duplicate content out there. Just have a look at the meriod of article directories out there. Those rticles are published on tons and tons of blogs and other sites. So yes duplicate content is out there, but it shouldn't be a worry because in many ways, duplicate content is good.

    It can help to spread the word out about your business such as through the article sites and on blogs.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by dbrwn View Post

      The thing about duplicate content is that it isn't in violation of anything. Of course you're going to find duplicate content out there. Just have a look at the meriod of article directories out there. Those rticles are published on tons and tons of blogs and other sites.
      As explained higher up in this thread, that isn't duplicate content.

      You've confused "duplicate content" with "syndicated content".

      They're two different things. The differences between the two are briefly explained in this post and this little article.

      Originally Posted by dbrwn View Post

      So yes duplicate content is out there, but it shouldn't be a worry because in many ways, duplicate content is good.
      Syndicated content is good, yes.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEOExpert999
    Great post I am going to link it so people can stop asking me the same question. Good job.
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  • Profile picture of the author Backlinko
    Originally Posted by trade4861 View Post

    Hi, I allow high quality guest post from users on my site. Before I ever approve a post I first check the web to make sure that no part of the content is posted anywhere else. Once Google indexes it I recheck the web in the event it was submitted to other sites. Today I noticed the writing was published to another site but on my site it was indexed 12 hours before the other site. My site is ranking for the content, theres is not. Does this still count as possible duplicate content since both were indexed so close together?

    Or, what if they submit the content to a site thats more powerful than mine, will the content get ranked better on that site?
    It's true that this is syndicated and not duplicate content...but it looks like YOUR SITE was the one doing the syndicating.

    Not the end of the world, but not ideal.

    You definitely want the content to get indexed at your site first. I'd ask the guy how the content ended up on another site so quickly.
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  • Profile picture of the author tyronne78
    The search engines don't like duplicate content on the same domain. Do you get penalized I don't know. I would think that if you had duplicate pages on your domain that the google bots would discount both pages meaning you wouldn't rank for either one of those pages.
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  • Profile picture of the author Charanjit
    I have been doing some guest posts for some top end IM companies that are employed by multi national companies, one of the biggest is ranking for the word ''insurance''. Every guest post must be 100% unique and the anchor text must be second/third paragraph.

    what is the true value of article syndication if your syndicating someone else's content.

    recent time squdioo and other 2.0 sites have gone down the route of unique articles only, so if the big boys are doing it, their could be some gain in following what they are doing.

    my honest opinion - your site full of unique content will be valued higher than a site that has syndicated content.

    I might be wrong but sometimes its good to follow, than lead.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by tyronne78 View Post

      Do you get penalized I don't know.
      According to Google's WebMaster Central Blog: "Duplicate content doesn’t cause your site to be penalized. If duplicate pages are detected, one version will be returned in the search results to ensure variety for searchers."

      Originally Posted by tyronne78 View Post

      I would think that if you had duplicate pages on your domain that the google bots would discount both pages meaning you wouldn't rank for either one of those pages.
      Well, that clearly isn't what Google thinks. And they go to great lengths to say so. On several websites, blogs, videos, in interviews, at conferences/meetings, and so on.

      Originally Posted by Charanjit View Post

      what is the true value of article syndication if your syndicating someone else's content.
      It's a way for people to share additional content that impresses them with their visitors/readers/subscribers.

      It isn't done for SEO benefits.

      There's a whole world out there beyond SEO.

      Not everyone bases every decision they ever make about their websites in accordance with getting the maximum possible attention from Google.

      It's true that "10 unique articles" will make your site rank better than "10 syndicated articles". But for countless webmasters, that isn't the point. Their point is that "10 unique articles and 10 syndicated articles" will provide more/better/different content for their readers than just "10 unique articles" without the additional syndicated content, and both will rank exactly the same (or possibly the one with the additional 10 syndicated articles will actually rank a tiny fraction better, sometimes)! :rolleyes:
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      • Profile picture of the author WebProfiteer
        Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post


        It's true that "10 unique articles" will make your site rank better than "10 syndicated articles".
        If what you claim about syndicated content is right then why would "10 unique articles" rank better in google than "10 syndicated articles". You contradict yourself.

        "Duplicate content" or "syndicated content"? I say potatoe potato. Google does care about duplicate content accross the internet, not just on the same domain.
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