Is syndicated content just duplicate content per Google??

did you buy this on WF?

Yes, but maybe not in the sense that they won't index the page with the syndicated content.

Still, being indexed doesn't mean getting ranked, and I would be shocked if you could rank for any competitive niche (read: profitable niche) with syndicated content.

Auto syndication isn't good. If you're going to curate content, you want to add your own commentary on the topic. Also, you want to handpick the content. See Disinfo.com for an example.

John,

Is the content in your site the originals, and the copies on other sites the syndicated copies?

Well, content syndication is basically your own content (content that you have exclusive ownership rights to) published in its entirety (or parts of it), as is, in other places (online and offline) ...

Your site won't most likely get "penalized" by the SEs for doing this, even if the syndicated copies of your original content is published in spammy sites with links pointing to your site, since you don't have control over these things, and the SEs know this --

Otherwise, your competitors could just copy your content and publish it in spammy sites so as to have your site "penalized" ...

What would most likely happen most of the time, when done right, is that the syndicated copies of original materials would rank lower than the originals in the SEs ...

And, when done right, you could get significant traffic funneled from relevant authority sites / offline materials that syndicate your original content, and you'd also get top of mind recognition across the traffic of those sites / offline publications ...

Here's what SearchEngineLand says about this:


Syndicated Content: Why, When & How
QUOTE:

How to Syndicate Safely
No doubt, many of you have been thinking that syndicating content creates duplicate content, and it does -- but, if handled correctly, the search engines will have no problem with this at all. Here are the four best ways for dealing with that problem:
1. rel=canonical: The best solution is to have the site syndicating your content place a rel=canonical tag on the page with your article, and have that tag point back to the original article on your site. This tells the search engines that the syndicated copy is in fact just a copy, and that you are the original publisher. Better still, any links to the syndicated copy will accrue to the benefit of the original article.

2. NoIndex: The second best choice is to have them NoIndex their copy of the article. By telling the search engines to keep the syndicated copy out of the index, the duplicate content is also solved. In addition, links from the syndicated article copy back to your site will still pass PageRank.
However, this solution is not as good as the rel=canonical tag; with NoIndex, it is likely that much of that PageRank will be passed out of the copy of the article to sites other than yours, and the rel=canonical passes nearly all of it back to the original.

3. Direct Attribution Link: You should only use the third best choice when you are not able to get the publishing site to accept one of the first two. If that happens, make sure you get a link directly from the syndicated copy to the original article (not to your home page).
Most of the time, this is still a good enough signal for the search engines to figure out which version is the original. There is some risk that they will not get this right, but that risk is low.

4. Screw It, Do It Anyway: There are times where you might want to syndicate content, but the publisher is not willing to implement any of the above three solutions. For example, they may only want to link back to your home page as attribution. This scenario can lead to the higher authority site being seen as the original publisher, with your copy seen as a duplicate. If this happens, the other site will rank for your content and not you.
While that may sound pretty harsh, sometimes it still makes sense to do it anyway. When the exposure and reputation-building benefits are high enough, syndication without ideal attribution could still be a good move. Unless traffic to your own site simply does not matter, you should only do this very rarely (if ever).

[/QUOTE]

Hope this helps. Cheers!

Not duplicate - but it also may not work how you want it to. See you can do two things to help
rel=nofollow
noindex

Depending on how your content is syndicated, Google might not treat it like duplicate content.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that many higher quality/higher trust sites running the same content might outrank you.

Just hope that they have enough brand power to drive direct traffic to you.

John,

No. Google indirectly (Matt Cutts from Google specifically) has said that duplicate content relates to the content being duplicated on one site. There are lots of examples of the same articles appearing on many web sites and they are still indexed on all of them without penalty.

Here's an example: "What a Young Wife Ought to Know"

Google it. You'll find it on over 2,000 websites.

BTW, read the article . . . classic and very funny . . . from 1902.

Large corporations (like the Associated Press) distribute their news articles on thousands of web sites as "syndicated content" and those articles are indexed.

The advice I would give is be sure to publish your unique articles on your site originally and wait until you know it's indexed in Google before you distribute it to other sites - that way Google will be sure to attribute the article to your site as the original source of the content.

Steve

My understanding is that duplicate content is when you have the same piece of content in 2 different places on your site...I'm going with Steve B on this one.

Thanks to everyone for your comments.

I think I have a better understanding of duplicate content now and maybe how Google treats it.

The new sites they made were all someone else content and syndicated on my site they had a link to the original story content at the bottom of each article.

The problem I also had was the entire web site, several pages and articles, was all syndicated content with no original articles.

Affiliate Maverick was the program I purchased

Any way thanks for your help.

John

It depends on your plan for the content. Having a set plan for the way you are using the content is the key to determining if it's just the same thing over and over or something else.

Take your time and consider the advice above because it's better than any WSO on the subject.

Hey JChilds

Basically you site is aggregating content from various sources and this is not consider duplicated content. That being said if the quality of your content is not good enough it's going to be tough to rank your website and attract visitors.

Aggregating content or curating content is what sites like google news, reddit, yahoo news and digg are doing. The name of this game is quality targeted content IMO.

Joel