Duplicate content rule with regards to your own content?

6 replies
Hi,

I know Google doesn't like the same content appearing up multiple times all over the internet, and will penalize your site for it.
But does that mean you have to write a separate, completely different Privacy Policy, About Me & Contact page for every niche site you create? Surely you'd run out of ways to rephrase the same thing?

Cheers for the tips,

Felix
#content #duplicate #duplicate content #duplicate content penalty #rule
  • Profile picture of the author RayWhittaker
    Google doesn't actually penalize you for posting duplicate content. This is a fallacy that seems to have taken hold around the IM world.

    You have to look at it from Google's point of view. If they were to serve up the same content page after page to users, how much do you think users would stick around?

    Google's algorithms are designed to assess which of the duplicate content is the original and promote that one. It will tend to ignore the rest. The rest will still be indexed; the backlinks will still work (assuming that's what the duplicate content is for). But Google is only going to promote one copy (hopefully the original).

    About me and contact pages will probably not do much in the search engines anyway; they are not going to be well optimized I don't suppose. If you're worried about it you can tell Google and other search engines not to index those pages using the 'noindex' meta tag and/or using a robots.txt file. There's no guarantee that the search engines won't ignore a robots.txt file though.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4635140].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author michaelgrisso
    Unless you have similar sites, I can see why you would want to rewrite each "About Me" page. However, the others are not needed.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4635174].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author mantrixx
      I wouldn't worry or bother rewriting those privacy, contact, about me pages.
      Seeing the results, I don't think it matters much.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4635188].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author AnniePot
    Originally Posted by PhoenixFlex View Post

    Hi,

    I know Google doesn't like the same content appearing up multiple times all over the internet, and will penalize your site for it.
    Wrong - no they won't.

    Originally Posted by PhoenixFlex View Post

    But does that mean you have to write a separate, completely different Privacy Policy, About Me & Contact page for every niche site you create? Surely you'd run out of ways to rephrase the same thing?
    Of course you don't have to write a rehashed Privacy Policy for each of your websites. How do you think Wordpress plugins which automatically provide bloggers with cookie-cutter privacy policies survive? Their policies must be on thousands and thousands of blogs.

    I'm surprised you haven't been reading all the threads over the past months which have explained in detail how this concept about duplicate content is nothing more than a myth.

    Maybe this post from the Official Google Webmasters Central Blog will help lay this to rest for you once and for all..
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4635229].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author joeyguru
    Make sure Google indexes your main site's content firstly. Then you can post those same articles all over the internet. I actually spin sometimes and sometimes not. (30%) Build link wheels with these articles to dominate!

    Your about me and privacy pages will never matter.

    Cheers!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4683008].message }}

Trending Topics