[Peter Lee]

Many of us may have a lot of misconceptions and myths about Google with regards to algorithm, paid links, page rank etc. Well Google hosted its third Online Webmaster Chat recently where Q&A session was held between Google and webmasters. One important revelation is:

Q:Duplicate content is always penalized by search engines. Then what is the reason that duplicate news content spread across many sub-domains from yahoo.com and many other popular sites does not gets penalized ?

A:As far as I know, none of the search engines penalize duplicate content — they just ignore the duplicates.

Read a lot more interesting answers provide by Google on nofollow, page rank, .gov, .edu and many others here:

Google's Q&A Session with Webmasters

Peter Lee

[tplahav]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for posting this link, there is good information there.

It's good to see they answer people's questions

Tanny

[Allen Lundy]

Peter,

My understanding on the "duplicate content" issue is not so much is the content on a lot of websites, it's - is this content on additional pages on the origial website, or is there a link to the same content on another website.

You can get a free book on my article directory that is all about duplicate content. No signup, just click on the ecover then save to your hard drive. that's it.

Article Profit Directory is in my signature

Allen

[Jeff Casmer]

Hi Peter,

Good info....I almost sensed double talk there in their response....

Google might not say "your a bad boy since you have duplicate content" but they dont put any value into it either.....

In a sense your getting penalized as your not rewarded either...LOL

Take care
Jeff

[Alan Thomas]

Peter,

That is very interesting. It has always confused me when "duplicate content" is mentioned.

Alan

[PatricKrost]

Jonathan Leger has explained this in his "Search Engine Myths" report.

I never believed in this 'duplicate content' theory....

[Peter Lee]

Hi Tanny, Allen, Jeff, Alan,Patrick
Thanks for your feedback. Jeff what you've just said is pretty interesting, I never thought of that. I guess the best is still having unique contents without having to worry about this. Who knows if Google has a change of mind later. But I think some of the other information Google provides will give many a different perspective to what they have believed or led to believe. But I just don't know why Google kept mum this information till now.

Peter Lee

[Patrician]

egg-zactly...

Google wrote the book on capricious

1.subject to, led by, or indicative of caprice or whim; erratic: He's such a capricious boss I never know how he'll react. 2.Obsolete. fanciful or witty. (hahahaha)
[Origin: 1585–95; < It capriccioso capriccioso]

—Related forms ca·pri·cious·ly, adverb
ca·pri·cious·ness, noun

—Synonyms 1. variable, flighty, mercurial. See fickle.
—Antonyms 1. steady, constant, consistent.

Originally Posted by Jeff Casmer

Hi Peter,

Good info....I almost sensed double talk there in their response....

Google might not say "your a bad boy since you have duplicate content" but they dont put any value into it either.....

In a sense your getting penalized as your not rewarded either...LOL

Take care
Jeff

[GT]

Hi, Peter:

Thanks for this info and the link. It's such a debatable issue and one that everybody wants to know more about.

I read the Answer you posted and immediately, I could see the double-talk in it.

The respondent said, "...none of the search engines penalize duplicate content — they just ignore the duplicates," which to me means the same thing, different words.

We call it "penalize." They call it "ignore." The result is the same - no credit for "duplicate" content.

That's just my opinion - my interpretation. Maybe it is not accurate. And other Warriors have added some additional insight to the issue, which is good.

I see, however, that Jeff C. got a similar impression as mine from the response.

And Patrician seems to concur with us.

GT

[KT52]

Hi Peter,
This is good info for me to understand because I do not know content should be used as duplicate or not.
Thanks
Kha

[Alan Mater]

Tough subject here. One thing to consider, though.

You could have exact same copies of an article all over the net. Yes, maybe only one article will show up in a search. But... a different article (exact same version) could show up for a completely different searched keyword phrase.

Ignored? To a point. I guess it depends how you look at it. I honestly don't take the time to create different versions of the same article. Too time consuming. I change my anchor text link in the resource box for a different keyword, that's about it. If I don't get credit for those backlinks... oh well.

Alan

[Davesbiz]

Hi Pipsters,

So the concensus is:- We do get penalized for duplicate content because the Search Engines don't credit the duplicate content. Therefore, is it a waste of time to submit an article to more than one Article Directory if our aim is to get a lot of backlinks with that article?

Dave

[Stephen Meyer]

If duplicate content was such a big issue or even ignored as stated them sites like ezine articles, Go Articles or Idea Marketers would not have such a high Google rank. One person has proven (a few months ago) that your site can get ranked and ranked well by Google using duplicate content. When I check my backlinks articles I wrote a year or so ago always show up 3-4 times and they are all duplicated on different web sites.

No one has ever shown that they have been penalized for duplicate content. I'm not even sure where the idea of being penalized came from. Except as GT said being ignored is the same thing. But it's not, being penalized would mean loosing page rank or being dumped in the sand box due to duplicate content as opposed to nothing at all happening by simply being ignored.

I have another blog that I do absolutely nothing with and it is filled with duplicate content. Actually 90% of the post are duplicate content and in 3 months with almost no visitors it now has a PR of 1, Steve?s Work At Home Blog. That link I just posted might be the only backlink the blog has on the internet. If it was being ignored due to duplicate content it wouldn't have any rank, but it does?

That leaves us with exactly what we started with, nothing. My beliefe is, no one knows how Google ticks not even Google employees.

[Clyde Dennis]

Thanks for posting this Peter, now if we could just get folks to read it so we could put this to bed. (...and a few other 'Google Tales' along with it!)

[kkchoon]

This is still a hot topic, let's view this from Search Engine Perspective:

1. Search Engine want to provide useful information to user, they don't want to show the same result all on the top 10 list, this will not add value to the user.

- So they start to filter out "similar" content, and only 1 "similar" content will show.
- Which "similar" content to show with be decided by the back links of that page, so if your page rank and back links is high, even you have duplicate content, your page still shows!

2. Search Engine view per page, not per article. When few articles mix up, they will become "similar" articles...and if those articles are all same topics, you might have higher relevancy and rank better!

- That's why when you syndicate the same articles to all directories, few of them will actually shows up for a week until Google runs the filter later.

As long as the article add value to your readers, it is safe to put it on your site, but your site must not be all duplicate content, or you may not get much traffic. Although you can built more back links to it, but it takes a lot more effort to draw traffic with duplicate content.

[Stephen Meyer]

I had to go and look up an article I wrote about 1 year ago. It has 50 plus links and each one is duplicate content. It's a poorly written article but it is still there floating around, "Is It An External Agent Or Can Motivation Only Come From Within?".

It's kind of funny because if it was being ignored it wouldn't appear except for one time.

I still get a kick out of that article. I was using some one's newly invented article spinner to change the wording of another article i wrote. Unfortunately the new spinning program made it sound kind of funny. But it took so long to do I posted it anyway.

[GT]

Thanks, Stephen, for your posts. Your experiences and insights always add more depth to the discussions. Keep up the great work!

GT

[zirkamer]

Thanks for sharing Stephen. Very interesting note.

Zirkamer

[Davesbiz]

Hi Pipsters,
This certainly is a hot topic and there seems to be two separate points of view. It seems to be a case of "Lets agree to disagree."
However, the issue strikes at the very foundation of our business. That is because we are in an extremely competitve market and the best way to get quality traffic is to reach the first page of Google with our keyword phrase. To do that we need to aim for thousands of backlinks. With this goal in mind, does anyone think that it is possible to achieve that using our articles on many directories, which is the same as using duplicate content for links.? (Keeping in mind that most of us still have full time jobs and there is a limit to the number of articles we can write in a week.)

Dave

[LOTNET7]

This discussion is very interesting. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered, especially on submitting articles to many directories.
Thanks for tabling this discussion to this forum, given me something to think about on how to avoid penalties.

Charles

[hirohurl]

If you are worried about duplicate content on articles that you are submitting to multiple directories, use SubmitYourArticle with their Article Leverage feature, which allows you to distribute unique versions of your article to numerous article directories.

If you are worried about hosting duplicate content on your site, stop! If the content is good and adds something of benefit to the visitor of your site that is also relevant to the theme of your site, then go ahead and add it if you like it.

I quite often import articles to my blog or website that I like. You can always top and tail an article with an intro or concluding paragraph of your own.

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by Davesbiz

Hi Pipsters,
However, the issue strikes at the very foundation of our business. That is because we are in an extremely competitve market and the best way to get quality traffic is to reach the first page of Google with our keyword phrase. To do that we need to aim for thousands of backlinks. With this goal in mind, does anyone think that it is possible to achieve that using our articles on many directories, which is the same as using duplicate content for links.? (Keeping in mind that most of us still have full time jobs and there is a limit to the number of articles we can write in a week.)
Dave

If I want to dominate a very competitive market, I will set my strategy for long term at start, because we are talking about big money here.

1. I will build a SEO SILO site.

2. I will "steal" the traffic for hot terms keyword, using "long tail keywords" strategy, just in case you don't know that the 2 words hot terms search are actually make up of many long tail keywords search, if I "steal" all of them, the 2 words term will actually rank for "2 words" only!

3. In my SILO structure, I build back links to long tail keywords, and use my internal structure to build my site profile for competitive terms. (More info on my post The Ultimate Strategy To Dominate Google for a Long Long Time - LSI and SEO SILO Structure ! Ultimate iWealth)

4. To maximize the effort, you should outsource the article creation.

Key to this method is you must know how to do proper keyword research, and find the correct keyword terms for your traffic source!

You can use Articlemarketingautomation or traffic kahuna or SENuke to build your back links, remember to use unique article (Original) on your new site, because you need a lot, and I mean a lot of back links to out rank Ezinearticles if you use the article from them and still want to out rank them!

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by LOTNET7

This discussion is very interesting. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered, especially on submitting articles to many directories.
Thanks for tabling this discussion to this forum, given me something to think about on how to avoid penalties.

Charles

Don't worry about the penalty, it doesn't exists, because Google said it themselves...

However, Google only show one version of the article. We are not sure how Google filter duplicate content (I call them "similar" content), but your article will show => Only on one site!

You can submit to as many directories for back links and if your article is good, publishers will pick them up from the directories and you will start to get traffic from various website!

You may consider Unique article wizard to maximize your article exposure and syndicate to over thousands of directories and blogs...

[kkchoon]

I would like to share some thoughts about the new auto blogging strategy...

I heard that auto blogging don't work as well as it used to be, but now there are some "unique content" networks that would like to share their content in exchange of your blog space for back links.

I have yet tried them seriously nor have great result, but I suspect this would actually work, especially with proper back links campaign.

Here are some free services for unique content:

1. Syndicate Kahuna
2. ArticleMarketingAutomation (free signup to receive content)
3. Unique Article Wizard
4. FirePow Free content

If anyone tried them in the future, please PM me...would like to know the result! Thanks!

[Peter Lee]

Hi Stephen,
Good point about your blog with duplicate contents getting PR1 so this alone proves Google may have some double talk. But just curious, why do you keep a blog with duplicate contents and with no visitors. What are the benefits.

Peter Lee

[Stephen Meyer]

It is part of a linking program.

Originally Posted by Peter Lee

Hi Stephen,
Good point about your blog with duplicate contents getting PR1 so this alone proves Google may have some double talk. But just curious, why do you keep a blog with duplicate contents and with no visitors. What are the benefits.

Peter Lee

[jjcali]

KKChoon,

Do you personally use Traffic Kahuna, Articlemarketingautomation, or SENuke to build your back links?

[jimmidwest]

Peter,

Thanks for the link.
I never realize such information are given from google.
Everyone should read this link before buying SEO script/program.

Thanks again,
Jim

[Peter Lee]

Hi Jim,

My pleasure. Even if we choose not to believe half of what's said, it's also the first time I've seen Google give so much information so that's good and we don't have to guess or speculate some of them now.

Peter

Originally Posted by jimmidwest

Peter,

Thanks for the link.
I never realize such information are given from google.
Everyone should read this link before buying SEO script/program.

Thanks again,
Jim

[Amarjit K Pal]

I never believed in this 'duplicate content' theory

[godisgood]

Hi Peter,

That's really a good information. Now we all have a claer understanding about duplicate content.

Cheers,
Jennifer

[Kooza]

There are two aspects of duplicate content which I think causes confusion and why this will probably be an endless debate, as soon as you mention "duplicate content" people always point out that Google doesn't penalize duplicate content, however that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't have a negative effect.

Duplicate content on your site, i.e. multiple versions of the same content should be avoided because it cannibalizes your PageRank and will hurt your rankings. Not because Google is penalizing you but because you are spreading your PageRank out over multiple versions of the same content rather than focusing it all on one version and nofollowing the rest.

Then there is duplicate content where you take an article for example and submit it to a bunch of article directories. As was mentioned by someone else Google obviously doesn't want multiple versions of the same content in it's results. Which is why it is important to track whether your articles are getting indexed or not, if they aren't indexed then you aren't getting credit for the back link.

Usually Google will index multiple versions of the same content however it will only rank one version, the site which has the most trust. So if you submit an article to a whole bunch of article directories including EzineArticles, it will usually be the one on EzineArticles which ranks well as it is the most trusted article directory.

Usually I will submit a unique version to the top three article directories and then just blast the rest.

The other thing to consider is do back links from content which is unique hold more weight than links on duplicate content?

In regards to placing duplicate content from other sites on your own site then that is purely down to the quality of the content rather than the fact it is duplicated. Good quality content will generate back links, increase subscriptions and repeat visitors, generate comments(unique content) etc, even if the content itself doesn't generate any traffic.

So there may not be a duplicate content penalty but there is definitely an indirect impact.

Mike.

[Party Plan Pat]

Originally Posted by Peter Lee

Many of us may have a lot of misconceptions and myths about Google with regards to algorithm, paid links, page rank etc. Well Google hosted its third Online Webmaster Chat recently where Q&A session was held between Google and webmasters. One important revelation is:

Q:Duplicate content is always penalized by search engines. Then what is the reason that duplicate news content spread across many sub-domains from yahoo.com and many other popular sites does not gets penalized ?

A:As far as I know, none of the search engines penalize duplicate content — they just ignore the duplicates.

Read a lot more interesting answers provide by Google on nofollow, page rank, .gov, .edu and many others here:

Google's Q&A Session with Webmasters

Peter Lee

Well that is good to know. Andy jenkins and brad fallon sure gave me a hell of a scare with that duplicate content spiel!