If Duplicate Content is a Myth ...

Even if duplicate content is a myth wouldn't this narrow your odds getting traffic? I mean if I pull up a page of listings and see that 10 of the sites all have the same content, I'm probably not going to visit more than one.

People republish articles from EZA all the time on their own properties. That's part of the reason we submit our articles there! Gains us backlinks (as long as the republisher keeps the links intact... some don't, which is a copyright infringement).

And yes, you can actually outrank the original iteration of that article with good backlinks. Depends on how established your own site is. Remember that EZA is an authority site sitting at PR6. That gives any content there a lot of ranking juice.

John

Yes you can do it ... Remember articles are just content and nothing more. Yes they are written in a specific manner, normally speaking directly to the reader. Some things such as news release are in 3rd person but the same applies, it is just content.

The reason why you write original content is because you want to say things in "your" words, put "your" feelings or "your" emotions into the content. There are other reasons but this is one major reason. For example if you do not have an english accent (you are from the U.S. and not the U.K.), then why would you want content that sounds as if it was written by someone from england.

Is it suggested that you take the content and create a site, well.. if it is your content feel free. If you are talking about taking others content then that is illegal as that content does belong to the author that posted it.

James

Duplicate content is NOT a myth. A specific penalty imposed by Google for duplicate content IS a myth. Duplicate content across sites is not "penalized" but rather often not displayed in search results because it is duplicated.

Here's an example you can see...

Take this EZA article by Lance Winslow:
Variety in Marketing Pays Off

Now, let's take the first line from that article and plug it into Google with quotes around it so we find only that exact phrase on other Web sites:

"Variety in your marketing mix will pay off every time and every smart marketing executive knows this"

When I do this search, I get 6 results and one of those six is the EZ Article link. However, at the bottom of the six results is this link from Google:

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 6 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

Because Google found this same line on a bunch of pages, it's only showing you a few of them. Clicking that link shows that Google has actually indexed that content on 20 pages, but by default only shows 6.

That's the potential problem with setting up a site solely on duplicate content. Not that you will be actively "penalized" for it, but that your relevant pages will be negatively affected (not penalized) by being among that group that falls beyond the results Google will display by default, meaning not only would people have to search Google for your terms, but they'd then have to click another link to see your pages -- and why should they do that when the results they're looking for have already been displayed?

I wrote this as a stream, I hope that I was clear in my explanation.

People do that all the time, especially when setting up
sites that target AdSense revenue. However, AdSense
revenue for many people setting up these type of content
sites has fallen WAY off over the last 2 years.

It really depends upon what you are trying to do. If you
write & post your own material,then your a positioning
yourself as the expert. If you post other's materials, then
you're presenting them as the subject matter expert, and
sending interested parties to their sites!

Willie

As Willie said, people set up sites that use other people's content ALL THE TIME. In fact, go to Google Blog Search, and do a search on a particular keyword, then narrow it down to the last 24 hours. You'll probably find that many of the blogs are just recycling content from elsewhere.

As for duplicate content, take a look at the following search:

Google

You'll probably notice that Copyblooger's "Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques" is at #1, and then a cut-down version at #3, and a virtual copy n' paste of the same article at #6. (Your exact results might vary.)

So the content has been somewhat duplicated and is yet still in at least 3 positions in the Top 10. Google shows duplicate content all the time.

Incidentally, I'd suggest Copyblogger is at #1, not because he was the original author (which he was), but because his site and article simply ranks better than everyone else. Period.

Re-purposing of EZA content is one of the biggest reasons that people submit to EZA

To have that content re-published elsewhere..

There have been adsense sites doing what you describe, en masse for years now and they still hold ranking.

I do this with all my content..

Publish the content to My site first, then EZA, then everywhere else.. even back on other properties I own.

Peace

Jay

Hi Brandon

But how does Google determine the "original"? I'm pretty sure it doesn't keep a "register" of who the original author is. So the only way it can know this is perhaps by which version it indexes first, and also who is pointing to what, in terms of links.

(For example, if lots of "social bookmarking" sites like Digg are pointing to a page, I imagine Google's bot views the page being pointed at as the SOURCE. At least, I HOPE it's smart enough to figure that out!)

Besides, even if two pages have EXACTLY the same article, it's highly unlikely the two pages will be 100% the same in Google's eyes, because there are other elements on that page that make it different.

Remember, Google's bot doesn't read articles, it reads pages. So unless you've lifted the exact same page (HTML code and all), it's not going to be a duplicate anyway.

The reason I don't think it should be called a "penalty" is because...

(a) This word has the wrong connotation in people's minds. Think sports, where you're issued a penalty because you did something wrong. Or if you park illegally, you get a penalty. Duplicate content is not illegal, nor is it wrong in Google's eyes. In fact, entire article directories are based on the duplicate content model.

(b) Google are not penalizing anyone for what some marketers think of as "duplicate content". Sure, all things being equal, they may give precedent to the page they indexed earliest, but it's extremely rare that all things are going to be equal!

If the original content publisher outranks a duplicate copy, I'd say it's almost certainly because of SEO factors such as the original having better "authority" and backlinks in Google's eyes, rather than anything we should call a "penalty".

So I think the word "penalty" should be dropped, because many people are getting the wrong impression from it.

Google simply picks what it believes is the most authoritative source and rewards that source. They don't "penalize" you. They simply don't reward you. And why would they?

They have to pick someone.

this is a ground breaking thread

yes this thread is excellent. now I was just wondering are u allowed to alter the articles you repost from the ezine directories in anyway? Can u change the title? Can u add in affliate links? Can you put in a paragraph or 2? Is that legal?

this is the crux of the problem that a LOT of people don't "get".

Yes, you can create a site stuffed with nothing but duplicate content, and in fact, itrs what we used to do back in 2004 - ish, with great success.

It's worthless now (or pretty much, you'll still find people promoting it, and saying "but my acne site ranks really high" and maybe one or 2 sites DO rank high - that's the nature of SERPS!) because such a site doesn't generally give a good user experience and search engines nowadays are all about good user experience

The reason it USED to work was because 5 years back, search engines assumed such sites were 'nexuses of excellence' on a specific topic.

They are, of course, no longer under that misconception.

I did try to maybe set up a site with some ezine articles last night. I didnt get the point. I mean. other peoples affiliate links and website links were on my site. So the only use I saw was maybe for adsense. Otherwise I don't see why someone would wnat to do this. Please explain what the benefit would be

This is what article marketing is all about. People submit their articles on EZA and GoArticles etc in hopes that other people will publish the articles on their sites and they will get backlinks. That's how it all works.

I remember i read a report saying that over 50% blogs are made of duplicated contents for the time being...

That is some real talk, thank you Ametis

For Duplicate Content, following is the view of Google:
"Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results."

For more details about Googles reaction on Duplicate Content you can get the details at Duplicate content - Webmasters/Site owners Help