Original Content vs Duplicate Content

[Garch]

One school of thought swears that using duplicate content that's been posted on other sites will hurt your ranking in Google.

The other school of thought swears that the only time duplicate content hurts is when it's duplicated across the same site.

I've experienced both. I've had sites with duplicate content get ranked high and get to PR3 in 60 days, and I've had sites that are ranked poorly with and stuck at PR0 for 120 days.

Obviously, theres more to the duplicate content story than meets the eye.

[Pat Jackson]

How do you draw the conclusion that there is more to it than meets the eye based on those two facts?

There could be many, many reasons why your site didn't rank well.

Oh, and as for duplicate content affecting rankings, You're Wrong

[Garch]

Oh, and as for duplicate content affecting rankings, You're Wrong

Certainly you can do better than pointing me to song lyrics to back up your opinion.

Can you?

[Pat Jackson]

Why? What's the difference?

[Steve Peters Benn]

Pat is right, the duplicate content filter is largely myth and as long as you haven't cloned somebodies web page it won't affect you. Here is a way to trigger it:

Copy someone's page title
meta tags
and content

Otherwise stop stressing out over SEO myth's- there are far too many people buying into them.

[Kay King]

Don't know why that link was posted. Not terribly helpful.

However, if you want in depth info about the mysterious (and often misinterpreted) duplicate content issue - use the search function here and you'll find more than you ever wanted to know. Just focus on those who seem to be posting from experience and knowledge rather than opinion.

kay

[Saul']

Originally Posted by Garch

Obviously, theres more to the duplicate content story than meets the eye.

Yes, there are also copyrights and jail time for breaching them.

[Jon Alexander]

Originally Posted by Pat Jackson

Oh, and as for duplicate content affecting rankings, You're Wrong

yes, he's wrong, but not for the reasons YOU think. Try your search in quotes. There are only 2800 matches or thereabouts.

Duplicate content doesn't HURT (unless you REALLY overdo it).

It just doesn't really help anymore, at least not in a money making sense.

[Steve Peters Benn]

Hey Saul,

There is an awful lot of content that can be duplicated out there, so 'jail time' isn't really the best answer to the dupe debate as legal issues don't resolve the situation. If you run a site about birds there will be many freely available articles, news reports and other entries that could potentially add value to your site, as Jon says - you need to deciede f it's going to help at all..

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Garch

Certainly you can do better than pointing me to song lyrics to back up your opinion.

Can you?

Because it's one of the best examples of duplicate content that you'll find. You can do similar searches on news events and so forth and you'll see the same thing.

[Saul']

Originally Posted by Steve Peters Benn

There is an awful lot of content that can be duplicated out there, so 'jail time' isn't really the best answer to the dupe debate as legal issues don't resolve the situation.

Yes. But the original post is general enough for a general reply. That does apply to certain content which falls under the definition of duplicate.

It doesn't answer anything but I didn't intend to, just pointing the obvious.

[Jesus Perez]

Duplicate content is thrown into the Supplemental Index.

[rtrotter]

Google does notice duplicate content within a site. Just check your Google Webmaster account and they tell you about duplicate titles and descriptions. If you go overboard with it then ranking will be impacted. I am speaking about duplicate content within a site.

Duplicate content across domains is not an issue. The page that gets ranked is the page with most authority. That is, if I duplicated a CNN news article on my site, I don't think I will every out rank CNN for it. However, both articles will be in the index.

Rodney

[JasonParker]

I find it doesn't hurt to have a mixture of original content and duplicate content. For example, you really can use quality PLR articles on a blog without spinning the content IF you also post original content. More original content than PLR.

Just ask my SEO ninja friend Bill McRea who uses services like WordPress Direct all the time to dominate Google.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by BlueSquares

Duplicate content is thrown into the Supplemental Index.

This doesn't exist anymore.

[Steve Peters Benn]

Hey Bgmacaw... that's what I thought.

[Clint]

Originally Posted by Jon Alexander

yes, he's wrong, but not for the reasons YOU think. Try your search in quotes. There are only 2800 matches or thereabouts.

Duplicate content doesn't HURT (unless you REALLY overdo it).

It just doesn't really help anymore, at least not in a money making sense.

Jon Alexander it seems to me you, on every single duplicate content , post out there , Way to go Jon. you really make in the den and the duplicate content topic lol

[Steven Carl Kelly]

If you've never seen this before, I thought you might be interested. It comes from Google themselves:
"Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks: There's no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that."

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...issue-bed.html

[Clint]

Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly

If you've never seen this before, I thought you might be interested. It comes from Google themselves:
"Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks: There's no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that."

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...issue-bed.html

I was actually looking for the same thread post. You got to it before I did.

You have to figure me once again , deceptivecon until next time
Clint

[SMS]

I don't think it's a given that both pages will be in the index, although there are steps you can take to pretty much guarantee your own page does appear in the main index.

Originally Posted by rtrotter

Google does notice duplicate content within a site. Just check your Google Webmaster account and they tell you about duplicate titles and descriptions. If you go overboard with it then ranking will be impacted. I am speaking about duplicate content within a site.

Duplicate content across domains is not an issue. The page that gets ranked is the page with most authority. That is, if I duplicated a CNN news article on my site, I don't think I will every out rank CNN for it. However, both articles will be in the index.

Rodney

[Colin Evans]

After some research, I wrote about it here:

Duplicate Content Penalty vs. Duplicate Content Filters – The Truth Revealed

[Jon Alexander]

Originally Posted by Clint

Jon Alexander it seems to me you, on every single duplicate content , post out there , Way to go Jon. you really make in the den and the duplicate content topic lol

you're welcome.

in case you need more 'instruction' :-) into why that search brings up the results it does, try this one too:-

you're not wrong

and then have a look at how the search terms differ, see if you can draw any conclusions.

[SMS]

That's a great discourse of the issue, Colin & you use some of the references that I also used in my "Irrefutable Laws Of Duplicate Content" report.

It's refreshing to read sommink that's unbiased for a change. Well done!

Originally Posted by Colin Evans

After some research, I wrote about it here:

Duplicate Content Penalty vs. Duplicate Content Filters – The Truth Revealed

[rtrotter]

Originally Posted by SMS

I don't think it's a given that both pages will be in the index, although there are steps you can take to pretty much guarantee your own page does appear in the main index.

This can be tested just by searching on any current news store. You will find most of the first page of results have exactly the same AP article.

On-site or internal duplicate content is interesting. If you have the same title tag and meta description on more than one page of your site, Google will treat that as duplicate content even if text in the body of page is different. However, if text in body of page is same on multiple pages but each page has a different title tag and meta description tag then Google will not treat them as duplicate content.

Knowing this, it actually may be that Google views duplicate content the same for both internal and external content but just treats them differently. They would expect a webmaster to control their internal connect and they provide tools, such as the webmaster tool, to help us do this. They also know that we have no control over what other sites do and therefore will not hold us responsible for our content being duplicated on other sites.

I know it sounds like I am talk as though the search engine is intelligent but this can be coded.

Rodney

[Keith Kogane]

Originally Posted by Colin Evans

After some research, I wrote about it here:

Duplicate Content Penalty vs. Duplicate Content Filters – The Truth Revealed

Good article. I've pretty much determined the same thing through trying it over a year or so. All of your content can be from free article directories, but if you group it thematically, post it consistently, and build backlinks intelligently, you WILL get some authority and those sites will start to rank.

Personally, I very much enjoy putting the BUM (marketers) to work for me. Often, my copy of the article in question will outrank the entry in the article directory where I sourced it from. But I imagine that gets the author traffic as intended. That's the whole point of those directories are for us to USE the content, right?

But you know, don't believe it. Doesn't matter to me.

[Colin Evans]

Originally Posted by Keith Kogane

All of your content can be from free article directories, but if you group it thematically, post it consistently, and build backlinks intelligently, you WILL get some authority and those sites will start to rank.

I agree... I also pay attention to on page SEO with particular attention on the page title, a meta description which gets the click (treat it like a classified ad), sometimes a new heading with intro, but most importantly of all good internal linking.

This is where PLR content comes into its own. You can add a resource box on the bottom, set up an RSS feed and submit it to get even more traffic/links from autobloggers...

[rashamba]

I would think that if a regular joe can use copyscape, Google has much stronger automated tools to check for duplicate content across domains.

[Diana Lane]

Originally Posted by Keith Kogane

All of your content can be from free article directories, but if you group it thematically, post it consistently, and build backlinks intelligently, you WILL get some authority and those sites will start to rank.

Absolutely. That's pretty much what I've found too. Tag and categorise duplicate content properly etc, and it's the middle ground between having to write every last word of your content yourself and producing much less of it, or running an unattended autoblog that produces gobs of it (usually with tags or categories that have nothing to do with the content). It doesn't take much more than a few minutes per post to put these things right, or to delete the Billy Idol interview that an autoblog plugin thought relevant to your high society wedding site.

That's far too much work though for all the people who still believe that a web site automatically means passive income. I think that duplicate content has mostly got it's bad reputation because the worst examples of it are the easiest to produce - and have been done so by the shedload.

In short, if it's sinking to the bottom of the internet then don't assume that it's because it's duplicate content. It's probably because it's junk.

[Diana Lane]

Originally Posted by rashamba

I would think that if a regular joe can use copyscape, Google has much stronger automated tools to check for duplicate content across domains.

That would be assuming that Google care about duplicate content, and I'm not convinced they do. I think they just care that it's relevant and useful. Google would not last long if their main aim wasn't to link searchers to this kind of content, and such searchers would not continue to use Google if it relegated this kind of content in favour of absolute tripe, just because it could only be found in one place.