Duplicate content

by 31 replies
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Hi guys,

I recently had a discussion with a friend and that brought up an important topic. How does Google behave towards duplicate content. By that I mean, one article posted on two (but only two) different sites. I've heard it can harm the SEO. Also if it does, is there a rule of how much different the two articles should be not to create the issue?

Thanks!

Ivan
#search engine optimization #content #duplicate
  • If Google interprets these as mirror sites promoting the same thing, not a good thing.
    • [1] reply
    • It's been confirmed that google applies a filter to duplicated content, meaning that it'll only show the version it perceives as the original rather than both.

      There's still a lot of debate as to whether or not google penalizes you in the SERPs for duplicated content. In my personal experience, they don't. I once had a domain that was treated as two separate entities by google (domain.com and the same with www), and after resolving the issue, I failed to see any improvement in serps.

      But that was just my personal experience. Regardless, having two versions of the same content indexed by google isn't a good thing.
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    • [1] reply
    • Google has plenty of documentation you can find on this topic, not the least of which is the Webmaster's Blog. but in the shortest possible summary, you gain zero benefit by having content one one site duplicated on another, and it can have a number of undesirable effects if you do.

      Focus on putting unique, high quality content only on your website property.

      Hope that helps!
      David
      • [1] reply
  • Hi Ivan,

    Don't take the risk, try to download a good article spinner or may be you can write your own if you have time. This will avoid the duplicate content as well as you are having a 100% uniqueness of your article. You might not know what is Google up to and they might change their algorithm from time to time.

    Best regards.
  • Thank you for bringing up this thread, i am also wondering about it.
  • Banned
    Submit quality and meaningful content on own site is major need for positive reputation in the market. And if you put same data on other site then search engine will be consider it as duplicate and it may harm your site content.
  • How does this affect mobile site and 'regular' site then?

    If i have one site, (mobile & regular version), both share the same content, does this rule still apply since they are on the same domain? (but mobile is on a sub-domain)

    mobile: m.mydomain.com
    regular: www.mydomain.com

    Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Hi,

      After Panda update Google only penalized the duplicate content !
  • Google have stated themselves that sites are never penalised for off-site content:
    Can competitors harm ranking? - Webmaster Tools Help

    The only "penalty" is that the incoming link will not pass any link juice.

    Your articles need correctly spinning so that they are at least 30% unique compared to the original for Google to view the articles as being unique enough to warrant listing rather than grouping the urls together in the search results.

    You may have seen the link saying "google has filtered websites that are very similar." This is where they have detected duplicate content.
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks guys for all your replies,

      so my conclusion is: avoid duplicate content .


      This explains the second part of my question: how much different should the two articles be. You say it's at least 30%. Is it possible though that in the future it will be even more? So far I do have some articles that I quoted on my site which differ more or less to this extend from the original and I've seen examples where both pages are ranked pretty high (one is even one positions below me on google, lol).

      what are other's opinions on this part of the question?

      Thanks!
      Ivan
  • Google rejects any duplicate content.
  • content should not duplicate . First research content ,gathering, writing , modification , grammatical check . always write unique and relevant .
  • The bottom point is, avoid duplicate content. Though you can still submit your article to different article submission sites. Just be sure to spin it before submitting.
  • Hmm. In my own view, it may be considered a duplicate content by Google especially if that article is posted on two main websites with different links on it. Either of you or both of you can be harmed or hurt by Google as it does not want any duplicate content.

    But if your article is posted on two article submission sites with links pointing to the same pages, and with copyright protected, as well as you have inserted something that makes it your own, then Google might not ban or consider it duplicate at all.
  • What I have seen confirmed by many internet marketers is that duplicate content does not matter that much if your a using it for "cities" or locations in general.

    For example; Recently I had setup about 10 sites like this:
    PS: Domain names are fictious, not used by me

    sanfranciscocarpetcleaners.com, santabarbaracarpetcleaners.com and so on and I used the exact same content on all 10 pages. Of course the sites where optimized for the specific cities.

    In my case, there where no duplicate content penalty by Google and all ranked very well.
    • [1] reply
    • DrLegend, you're far better off putting your time and energy into creating fresh, unique, high-quality content than duplicating (especially spinning) existing content. Re-writing or spinning content is, to use one of Avinash Kaushik's favorite terms, "sub-optimal" (to say the least).

      If I were you, I'd take this advice seriously because time spent on content rewriting and spinning or what percentage difference the rewrite should be is time not well spent when you could have created dynamite fresh unique (and link-worthy) content in the same time or less.

      David
  • This is a no no. Try 100% Organic Original content instead of all that duplicate spun content.

    I just got a blogger blog ranking for a keyword in less than two weeks, ok the keyword only has a 140 searches a month but I got my site ranked with a few organic posts.

    Remember that Google also measures the lenth of the articles, paragraphs, word count, etc.
  • On-site duplicate content = indeed a penalty
    Off-site duplicate content = the first one to post and index will have the benefit, others will get pretty much nothing

    Let me know if I need to clarify this
  • Okay, I want to put original content on my websites but I will need to outsource it. Here's the problem. How can I tell that what I get is really original content and not the product of spinning? Of course I will run it through copyscape but spun articles can pass copyscape as I understand it. I'm not clear on how Google can tell that content that will pass copyscape isn't original but I've heard they can. So I could pay for original content, have it pass copyscape and still end up with spun articles that Google can detect. Is there a solution to this?
    • [1] reply
    • I would say if it passes copyscape your are fine. As long as another site is not s aying the samething you are for your keyword your site will not be affected. Goe woglill not rank two separate sites with the same content. They will catch on to it sooner or later.
  • I would also not risk putting duplicate content. Google can easily find out about it and I would not run the risk for both sites. I rely on copyscape because if your articles pass copyscape, you are safe. Good luck!
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  • There is no any benefit of posting duplicate contents in the articles sites as Google reject the duplicate contents. So always try to post a quality contents.......
  • To avoid being penalized, just use a unique content for every site.
  • Google does not support duplicate content. Google filters out duplicate content and recognizes it as a duplicate content. so if you would copy a duplicate content on two different sites it(Google) would certainly crawl the content on both the sites for the same user query and would result in duplication of content. to curb this you could just use the content as a base and create your own content since fresh content is always appreciated by Google.
  • Just think about it this way...

    For those looking to build quality websites that achieve high Google search results, nothing has really changed. As always, the key is to focus on publishing high-quality original content that readers will want to share...
  • the original article should always be posted on your site first..if you wish to post it on another of your site, you will need to spin or re write it also..
    • [1] reply
    • If you have two or more webpages within your domain that are identical in content, use URL canonicalization to easily fix the duplicate content issue within your site.

      If you have multiple websites copying your content (such as link-bait pieces, press releases, or popular articles or blog posts)- bad for those sites (if all they do is scrape content), good for you (since you are not the one scraping content and have no control over scrapers).

      If you have an article that you submitted to two different directories, it may get rejected, or if it does get accepted and published, oh well, especially if it's just two articles.. BUT in the future, learn how to spin articles (they should still be readable somewhat), or at least rephrase the title, summary, bio and headings a bit.
      • [1] reply
  • I would submit quality and unique content.
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    Duplicate content

    Hi guys, I recently had a discussion with a friend and that brought up an important topic. How does Google behave towards duplicate content. By that I mean, one article posted on two (but only two) different sites. I've heard it can harm the SEO. Also if it does, is there a rule of how much different the two articles should be not to create the issue?