Article Writing - Duplicate Content

"The same article in multiple directories" isn't duplicate content. It's syndicated content. Someone who doesn't understand this isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, a "guru". (He might be someone who'd like you to think he is, though, of course).

There are 1,000 threads here discussing this subject, Jacquis. There've been 2 or 3 just in the last 48 hours. The "search function" is really good: you can search for words in the title of threads, and all sorts of useful stuff.

If you use the search button and look for duplicate content as title keywords - you'll find a lot of information.

The problem with listening to this person and that person is

1. you may be hearing something they aren't saying
2. they may not know what they are talking about
3. they may be selling article spinners

Articles are syndication - not duplication. Syndicating works fine - doesn't get flagged - google is fine with it.

All one has to do is read the "Rules" that Google has available for everyone.

Your question falls in the "Myth" category. Duplicate Content is attained when you post the SAME information on MULTIPLE Sites and/or Pages that YOU OWN.

So, if you post article "A" on your main website page, then also on page 12 and 53 (for example,) THAT is "Duplicate Content". On the other hand, post that article ONE TIME on your site, and on multiple directory sites, and as mentioned by Alexa, it Syndicated Content.

Good luck.

Pete

Wow - very interesting discussion. This is a topic I've always thought I knew perfectly but now realize I didn't know as well as I thought!! Just joined the forum and learned something within the first five minutes - nice!

I have a lot of similar websites but have different content written for each even though many articles are very similar. It sounds like I could just write an article about say car insurance once and then use it on all my car insurance sites. This would save me a lot of time and money but I've always thought Google would treat that as duplicate content.

Do they look at the server? Having the same content on ten sites all on the same server I would think might raise a flag...but maybe not!

I was just thinking about this question the other day. Thanks for clarifying it.

Yep, as has already been said, it is perfectly fine to do this and if your article is written well, it is going to happen anyway as other sites want to list it also.

Google would never penalize this and one reason alone is because people could write an article for a rival online business and then just get it listed all over the internet, just so as to get their rivals into hot water.

As for the 'gurus', if it is someone calling themselves this, just remember that is just an overinflated title they use.

IMO, Real marketing gurus are called this by others and have no need to bestow these titles upon themselves.

My thoughts are that splatting the exact same article onto thousands of sites is pretty much 'spam'. After all, you're filling the web up with unnecessary copies of something.

RSS 'syndicates' snippets of the article, and you're supposed to follow the link to the definitive full article on ONE site.

People who call it 'syndication' don't understand what real offline syndication is. Articles get syndicated in the real world because an article in the WSJ, for example, will not be visible to the majority of the world population, and thus it is a valid technique to duplicate to improve penetration.

The web, as you should know, works differently. If you put a link to something on any number of sites, they can ALL pass through to the original, so only one copy is actually needed, and any other approach is a waste of planetary bandwidth and diskspace.

To help you understand the answer to this question, ask yourself one thing.

why are you publishing your article on multiple sites?

If the answer is to improve traffic, then ask yourself another question.

what would you rather have promoting your site? 10,000 identical copies of an article, or 10,000 unique versions of an article?

You can submit it but its advisable to rewrite it and submit to various other directories.

It is not the duplicate content you can use spinner tools to spin the articles to get the fresh article

I write one article and submit it only to ezinearticles and articlebase. These two are the top directories and many bloggers takes article out of these sites. So it does help in getting good back links.

I once wrote a short report titled "Duplicate Content - What You Need To Know!"

The introduction went (and it is true):

"One Saturday afternoon, I spent 3 hours researching 'Duplicate Content' on the Net. Read around 45 different articles - including detailed patent applications filed by search engines including Google for various 'methods' of detecting duplicate content."

Here are some highlights of that research (Caution: this is around 4 years old, so update it with your own study)

1. One thing is obvious - no one, experts included, knows just how much customization is 'enough' to call an article unique from a SEO point of view. The general recommendation seems to be 15% to 30% of the article being 'different'

2. Definitions of Duplicate Content on the Web:

2 broad kinds of duplicate content are referred to:

A. Having multiple pages with similar content on the same website
B. Having the same (or similar) webpages on multiple websites or domains

Definition #1 of Duplicate Content:

* It is a strategy by which varying domains use the same or near same website to serve the user. Also if contents of one page on the internet are same or similar to another, it is considered duplicate content. Duplicate content is considered spamming by Search Engines and therefore should be avoided.

Definition #2 of Duplicate Content:

* separate web pages with substantially the same content, which may attract a penalty from search engines.

Ref: Website Duplicate Content

So, What Is The Duplicate Content Filter?

Spammers sometimes deliberately try to trick the search engines into returning inappropriate, redundant, or poor-quality search results, displaying pages that are exact replicas of other pages (created with the sole aim of getting higher SE rankings).

To make search results more meaningful to users, search engines use a filter that removes the duplicate content pages from the search results.

And What Makes Content 'Unique'?

In other words, what triggers the 'duplicate content filter'?

No one knows how much duplication can result in a penalty. It may be 10 words, 25, a paragraph or an entire page. See this article for more info -
Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties | Top SEO Tips

The exact percentage of similarity beyond which a search engine may penalize your site is not known. It most likely varies from search engine to search engine. Your aim should be to keep your page similarity as LOW as possible.

And What Are 'Near Duplicate' Pages?

Near duplicate pages are more complicated. Both Altavista (later owned by Yahoo! - patents: 5,970,497 and 6,138,113) and Google have been awarded US patents (6,615,209 and 6,658,423) that improve on existing methods for classifying duplicate content.

These patents are for 'systems' that allow quick comparisons between web resources (without having to match 'word for word') and identify 'patterns' of similarity across different resources.

Google's patents are capable of identifying duplicate content that is a subset of another document. Again, I was not able to locate any specific information about just how much counts as 'similarity'.

Probably the biggest target in Google's sights at the moment are the many duplicates of public domain content such as Wikipedia. The system should also foil domain spammers who register many different domain names under different keywords all pointing to the same website.

You can learn more from this article about Duplicate Content:
Duplicate Content

Hope this helps.

All success
Dr.Mani

Yes if you post article your website article again n again on your website in different title so its get "Duplicate Content". On the other hand, don't post that article on your site again 2-3 times only 1 time, after that you can post this same article on multiple directory sites, and as mentioned, it Syndicated Content.
Hope you understand well.

There is no penalty for duplicate content but your link won't be counted. Its a fact.

I think Duplicate Content creates problem as stated by Bluehatseo for Submit your competitor Articles

All those same articles on thousands of sites creates a massive duplicate content penalty opportunity. So the worst choice you can make is to go through the articles published on your site and submit them. In the middle of the bad choices spectrum would be to write unique articles and submit those. Unique articles are for pulling in seo traffic and thus they belong on your site and preferably nowhere else. You throw little fits when people steal your content, why would you willingly give it out? The wisest choice is to submit your competitors articles because if you’re going to put anyone at risk for duplicate content you might as well put them not yourself. I’ve always said, there’s two ways to rank: You going up or them going down. I own about 170 article directories as part of my basement. I understand how the article game is played. People aren’t submitting articles to my sites because they want my directory to be the best smelling turd around. They want the links. I want the pages of content for link laundering and they want the links, that is what its all about and nothing more. No one owes me unique articles, nor is it doing them any favors to give them to me.

Source:Blue Hat SEO-Advanced SEO Tactics » Open Questions: When To Never Do Article Submissions