Duplicate content - yes or no?

Yes there have been many threads of this.
So many threads on this infact that there needs to be a seperate forum category called "duplicate content" made in this forum lol.

Its hard to have control though when people put your article on other domains. then it is duplicated anyway

It's called syndication and it's been employed throughout the world long before the Internet came along. People get so hung up about this whole duplicate content thing, it's almost as if they're just hanging on to something to worry about as a means to stop taking action!

Just take a look around you - at ALL the types of syndication going on and why. Article directories are hugely favored by the serps and one of the key things about them? Their articles get picked up by others for SYNDICATION. Even IF you submitted unique articles you aren't exempt from this, as others are allowed to take your full article (resource box in tact) and syndicate it. Also look at RSS feeds. The entire purpose of RSS is to be able to syndicate your content across more mediums.

While on the topic look at videos - look how viral some can go, ending up ALL over the place. Certainly google's algorithms aren't dissecting video content but the point is, syndication is a good thing, has it's place and is widely used. Google isn't going to say "Hey your article was found on 20 different sources, we're penalising you!!"

Anyways - just my opinions from my own experience. Get writing, get busy and take action, stop worrying that you're going to do something wrong because in the end it just stops you from taking any action. Get your "duplicate content" out there and test for yourself if it hinders or helps you, you can then form your own opinions and learn from the process.

Karen

Much of search engine results weigh heavily on "context".

A highly focused niche article on a general directory such as EZA will only be given so much weight.

Now add the same article to an "authority site" on that same niche, then watch the traffic increase exponentially (from personal experience).

I've seen year old blog posts rise in serps from the right comments being posted.

I've had year old articles find new life by being posted on a newer authority blog.

Syndication works.

Age and duplication is not a factor, as long as the article is quality.

In my experience, syndication and subsequent duplication has done nothing but help my site rankings and traffic.

This one may be helpful: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-ploy-not.html

Great minds think alike, Sydney. That's what I've been saying for over a year now.

Thanks for the tip Sydney, How many article directories would you submit your 'varied' articles to? I.e will you re-write each article for 10 different sites or do you only focus on the top 3 directories?

I always submit first to EZA, then to the same content to many artilce directories all are pointing to my blog. (I use the same content on blog too.).

I always get traffic from ezine articles, other directories and from searchengines.:rolleyes:

Duplicate content is a Myth!

There's an interesting point in the Google Webmaster Blog above. It says:

"Most search engines strive for a certain level of variety; they want to show you ten different results on a search results page, not ten different URLs that all have the same content. To this end, Google tries to filter out duplicate documents so that users experience less redundancy. You can find details in this blog post, which states:

When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.
We select what we think is the "best" URL to represent the cluster in search results.
We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL."

It talks about duplicate content that is directly under our control. But the point is, surely, the search engines want to attract viewers with a good variety of content. It must be somewhat frustrating to them to see the same article in every spot of the first page, just as it is frustrating for people searching.

At some point, when they figure a way to do it, are the search engines not likely to select "the 'best' URL to represent the cluster in search results" regardless of whether the sites have a single owner?

I believe, to be on the safe side and to get as many page one listings as possible, it is probably better to make sure articles that we distribute are not identical.

What's your view?

Well no wonder why. See the bolded part. It probably wasn't so much the duplicate content it self but THE WAY he was going about things. The bold above directly breaks Google's terms which can be read at the links above in this post. That is direct apparent manipulation of the search engines which is the NO-NO (separate issue from the dupe content itself).