What exactly is duplicate content?

16 years ago

Hi gracetog,

There is no mystery to what duplicate content is, it is just what the words imply, the same information repeated in multiple places. Any thing that you think may be duplicate content probably is duplicate content. That includes syndicated articles, blog posts, duplicated directory listings, etc. You name it, if it is found in more than one place it is duplicate content.

And yes, in the eyes of Google and virtually everyone else, it IS duplicate content. The Good news is that Google does not penalize your website for duplicate content. They may decide that your entire webpage is duplicate content and they may decide to not index it, or may include it in the supplemental index and you may not receive any ranking benefit from duplicate content. However this is not the same as a penalty. For the most part Google will filter duplicate content from SERPs and that's about it.

There are other types of duplicate content that many webmasters seem to be unaware of, primarily canonicalization issues. That is where the exact same webpage is referenced by multiple URLs.

For example the following URLs may all resolve to the same document:
http:// www . domain.com/
http:// domain.com/
http:// www . domain.com/index.html
http:// domain.com/index.html

In the eyes of search engines these are viewed as separate documents and thus duplicate content.

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Marhelper

16 years ago

There are many that do not believe that a duplicate content penalty exists but I have found opposite. This is a sticky issue.

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dburk

16 years ago

Originally Posted by Marhelper

There are many that do not believe that a duplicate content penalty exists but I have found opposite. This is a sticky issue.

I have trouble believing you, I haven't every heard of any credible evidence of a duplicate content penalty, so please share if you really have such evidence.

Here is what Google has said about this myth:

Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks: There's no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty."

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty"

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Marhelper

16 years ago

Originally Posted by dburk

I have trouble believing you, I haven't every heard of any credible evidence of a duplicate content penalty, so please share if you really have such evidence.

Here is what Google has said about this myth:

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty"

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

OK. I did an experiment where I took articles from GA, EZA, Articlebase, etc.. I intentionally grabbed low comp., high tail keyword articles that were related to my site. I then went into my site and placed them in the article repository. I proceeded to backlink like heck, etc..

The result, close to 100 said articles and none of them came close to 1st page on big G which is where the articles and the original content was placing. In fact, none of them ranked anywhere period. This was the result after months of backlinking etc..

Just my experience ... try for yourself and good luck.

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dburk

16 years ago

Originally Posted by Marhelper

OK. I did an experiment where I took articles from GA, EZA, Articlebase, etc.. I intentionally grabbed low comp., high tail keyword articles that were related to my site. I then went into my site and placed them in the article repository. I proceeded to backlink like heck, etc..

The result, close to 100 said articles and none of them came close to 1st page on big G which is where the articles and the original content was placing. In fact, none of them ranked anywhere period. This was the result after months of backlinking etc..

Just my experience ... try for yourself and good luck.

Hi Marhelper,

You just described your inability to get duplicate content to rank well, there is nothing in your post that suggests a penalty. You didn't even mention if you managed to get those pages indexed, were they?

I hope you didn't think you could just plagiarize someone else's content and "steal their rankings." Besides being unethical it is often difficult to outrank the original source by just copying and promoting stolen content. It's not impossible though.

What you were encountering was likely the duplicate content filter, not a penalty. Google has learned that searchers do not like SERPs that list nothing but the exact same content on multiple websites. To ensure that search queries return a variety of results they implemented a duplicate content filter that filters out pages with duplicate content to improve the user experience for Google's users.

Your page would have to outrank the original source before it would appear for the targeted search term. You could easily verify that you are not penalized by adding a parameter to the query to exclude the original source.

Try searching: [Your Keyword] -site:[your competitor's domain]

I bet your pages show up then! This added search parameter simply excludes results from your competitors website, it doesn't alter the results in other way.

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gracetog

16 years ago

Hmmmm... thanks guys. Ok so you see, what's been my concern is that if I post my articles on the article directories FIRST, before putting them on my website; when I eventually put them on my website, it could be just by-passed by Google, as they could have chosen the article directories' content versions of my articles instead?
Isn't it so?

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dburk

16 years ago

Originally Posted by gracetog

Hmmmm... thanks guys. Ok so you see, what's been my concern is that if I post my articles on the article directories FIRST, before putting them on my website; when I eventually put them on my website, it could be just by-passed by Google, as they could have chosen the article directories' content versions of my articles instead?
Isn't it so?

When you post articles on article directories you are able to add a link to the source of the article, which is your website of course. This helps Google to figure out the original source of the article, but isn't a guarantee of which page will appear in search results. Ultimately it seems the page with the most PR ends up in search results.

Personally I wouldn't be too concerned. The article directories will tend outrank you while your page is new, but over time, with promotion, your own pages will eventually outrank those article directories. It's the cumulative effect of your promotional efforts that eventually wins over.

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gracetog

16 years ago

Originally Posted by dburk

When you post articles on article directories you are able to add a link to the source of the article, which is your website of course. This helps Google to figure out the original source of the article, but isn't a guarantee of which page will appear in search results. Ultimately it seems the page with the most PR ends up in search results.

Personally I wouldn't be too concerned. The article directories will tend outrank you while your page is new, but over time, with promotion, your own pages will eventually outrank those article directories. It's the cumulative effect of your promotional efforts that eventually wins over.

I think these makes sense. Thanks

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gracetog 16 years ago

Ok thanks guys
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- Jehnavi 16 years ago
  
  The press release is great way to divert attention of the public.It is like advertisement of the site public like a newspaper. A press release is an announcement, update or disseminate news on a corporate website or any other organization. It is distributed on various news portals, websites, PR, and other relevant websites. The main advantage of distributing press releases, exhibition, he gives a company. It ensures that the greatest number of people to read and discover new web site or message issued. He has a very broad spectrum and target everyone from a target consumer for a person who may one day become a consumer.
  
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  julia1 16 years ago
  
  Hi,
  Duplicate content term is used in the field of Search Engine Optimization to describe content that appears on more than one page or even on different websites. Search engines have the capability to recognize the original content and sometimes search engine penalises the sites for keeping the duplicate content. Its better to post different content on sites and in blogs.
  
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  balilong 16 years ago
  
  duplicate content is just a risky act when it comes to copyrighting. Any author and composer has the right to claim what he or she created.
  
  Thanks
  
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Google.me

16 years ago

Originally Posted by dburk

I hope you didn't think you could just plagiarize someone else's content and "steal their rankings." Besides being unethical it is often difficult to outrank the original source by just copying and promoting stolen content. It's not impossible though.

Dude you must be phychic

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balilong

16 years ago

well basically a duplicate content is when an original content is being copied. And also for those articles that are re-written and they are 60% different from the original content are still considered as duplicate content.

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caitlinrose

16 years ago

Dupe content more likely to get nailed real content victim, which is exactly the same page more than once. creation date of the move is not possible, so that the content is likely to be fooled removed from PR, or other elements of mathematics. First found could also act, although perhaps not always very responsible for the original work.

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gracetog 16 years ago

Wow, thanks guys.
Caitlinrose - I didn't quite understand your post? Pls explain..

dburk - thanks again. you got that video from Google blog?

Marhelper - what things did you do to backlink? If they were low competition, they should have ranked high... What do you mean by 'high tail keywords'? Did you mean to say 'long-tail'?

balilong - cheers, II've put anotehr scenario below too..

jelincrispy - hmmm.. thanks.

Pls all look at this 2nd scenario below.

So what about this scenario then:

two keywords:-
1. how to ride a bicycle
2. how to ride a bike.

If I write an article of each that are not exactly the same words but say just about the same thing. Would that be duplicate content?
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jelincrispy

16 years ago

Duplicate content is very common on the web. It is presented in the form of distributed content, reflecting, scraping content, quoting, reusing content, data, links, etc. Generally duplicate contents are used by web spammers.

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mavericace

16 years ago

Duplicate content has been and always will be a natural part of the Web. It’s nothing to be afraid of. If your site has some dupe content for whatever reason, you don’t have to lose sleep every night worrying about the wrath of the Google gods. They’re not going to shoot lightning bolts at your site from the sky, nor are they going to banish your entire website from ever showing up when someone searches for what you offer. The duplicate content probably won’t show up in searches, but that’s not the same thing as a penalty.

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edcampbill

Banned 16 years ago

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balilong 16 years ago

Originally Posted by edcampbill

Typically duplicate content is not unusual to us it is very common, I can say it is acceptable but when it comes to SEO I think it is not effective.

well when it comes to SEO duplicate content is not the right answer to make it to the top.
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- leclaims 16 years ago
  
  Duplicate content is anything that appears in more than one place. Now what is duplicate content according to Google? Good luck trying to find out. Do they consider a string of 5 words appearing on two different pages duplicate content? A string of 200 words? 400? This is definitely a tricky subject and I'm not sure if anyone actually knows the real answer.
  
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harryc

16 years ago

Originally Posted by gracetog

What exactly is duplicate content in terms of A website, article directories and a blog.

The same artcle on my website, my separate blog, and 20 article directories - that's not duplicate content in the eyes of Google search engine right?

Which of these do you want searchers to read?

How pleased will searchers be if they read one and it links to another that is exactly the same?

What is the point?

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princenana13

16 years ago

If all these duplicate pages have the same link text you will dilute your link juice for that particular link text. This, in my mind is the best reason for insuring that a particular link text all go to the same page and not different URLs.

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anderson9731

16 years ago

For example, forum posts will often quote large blocks of text repeatedly or re post articles from other sites. Most search engines won't target forums for duplicate content because they also produce so much original content.
At one time it was possible to fool the search engine by keyword stuffing the content of your page; this is no longer the case, as the algorithm can detect such measures. The people at Google are no fools and they have developed their algorithms to weed out fraudulent content. Content that is appreciably the same could be construed as duplicate content, as could other "black hat" techniques like creating other pages that contain the same content purely for the purposes of manipulating search results.

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websitepopularityservices

16 years ago

of course there is a duplicate penalty
if you have 11 sites that have the same title "how to fry an egg" one of the 11 is going to not make it in the top 10 on Google for "fry an egg"
that is the duplicate penalty

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pr678com

Banned 16 years ago

Duplicate content is common on web. duplicate contents are used by web spammers.

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Roberto L

16 years ago

I have a question!

If I have 2 sites, then upload a same article on each of them, just with a very small change like the order of the sentences, phrase using, etc.

The 2 sites are of big different importance, eg. A is very important, B is less important, and of course the article on site A will be reflected and found by google faster than site B, what will google think? site B is a duplicate content or site A?

Can anybody skilled in this area can tell me about that, tks

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DannyBatelic

16 years ago

There is not a singel shred of evidence that google punishes duplicate content.

The internet is about user experience. If your site is full of junk content people aren't really going to visit you much anyway.
People visit sites to have questions answered, problems solved. A lot of good sites have a news sections, where they aggregate reviews and articles for their readers. This "duplicate content" doesn't hurt them.

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Tommy Perez 16 years ago

The duplicate content issue ONLY becomes an issue if you're trying to rank the same or significantly similar piece of content under the SAME keyword.

Otherwise...there is no problem. So, you can rank the same content under different keywords.

The duplicate content issue only makes sense as Google is trying to improve the user experience - in any ONE given search - which is why searchers will feel better when they see unique search results.
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- seovcim 16 years ago
  
  Hi friends...
  
  1.There is no mystery to what duplicate content is, it is just what the words
  imply, the same information repeated in multiple places.
  2.Any thing that you think may be duplicate content probably is duplicate
  content.
  3.That includes syndicated articles, blog posts, duplicated directory listings,
  etc. You name it, if it is found in more than one place it is duplicate
  content.
  
  Thanks.....
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  ewenmack 16 years ago
  
  All I know is I have a website with over 500 articles, all take from directories, unchanged
  and I'm on the front page of Google with 74,000,000 competing pages for my search term.
  
  Search term gets 2,800 daily searches.
  
  The site was registered June this year and didn't start to get built out untill August.
  Has page rank of 0 and beating those with page rank of 4 and 5.
  
  All the best,
  Ewen
  
  Thanks
  
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