Duplicate Content Penalty - Fact or Fiction?

[gky45]

We publish a series of self help web sites in the Health sector and in our case in certain cases there is a certain amount of duplication of terms i.e. if you are writing and giving a detailed analysis of “Acute Myocardial Infarction” there are only a very few ways that you can accurately describe it content wise.

With ourselves and the more major National Health web sites there are obviously is going to be some form of duplication of content.

How real (or not as maybe) is this so called Content Penalty issue? Does it just primarily relate to whole pages of lifted and copied content or is it more flexible? Does it allow for, in our case, featured definitions of certain items? If not how do News Syndicates get away with syndication of news items etc?

Anyone got any clues?

Patrick

[incrediblehelp]

I really never believed their was a duplicate content penalty. Their could be a duplicate content filter, where Google decides which document (page) contains the original content (most of the time they pick the wrong one) and then all others fall under the one they list first in the SERPs. Now with that being said many other algorithmic factors are also involved in which page ranks highest, meaning the originator of the content doesn't always get to rank first querying a piece of the content in the Google search.

I really don't see your website using definitions along with personalized copy discussing these definition should be an issue at all.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I really never believed their was a duplicate content penalty.

Jaan can you guarantee that Google or other SE will not change that? What do we do then, when that happens?

Sit back and enjoy?

[incrediblehelp]

Sure they could change that or it could be happening right now! I dont know for sure. All we can do is try to develop informed opinions about some of these factors at Google, Yahoo and MSN.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Sure they could change that or it could be happening right now! I dont know for sure. All we can do is try to develop informed opinions about some of these factors at Google, Yahoo and MSN.

I think Google are working on that, while I was just reading their quidelines, which seem to me that have been recently updated?

"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."

I look from time to time at their guidelines, to have a picture what they dislike and what they might be aiming to achieve. I think that is the best way to avoid any problems in the future.

So I guess we better be careful with such issues in general. ;)

[incrediblehelp]

More importantly they should be improving on how they decide which document is the originator. That is the root of all duplicate content issues.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

More importantly they should be improving on how they decide which document is the originator. That is the root of all duplicate content issues.

That is what I was thinking all the time too man. I hope those Google guys read some times what we write here. LOL

[Weedy Lady]

If there was such a thing as duplicate content penalty 123greetings would not be locked into the number one position for free e cards. The reason they have this position is that they have gazillions of "affiliate" sites with duplicate content, every single one of which has all those thousands of links pointing back to 123greetings.

So what counts? IBL's! And how do you get them? Get suckers to be your affiliates and don't pay them a penny for doing so. And tell the suckers that they are SOooo fortunate to be able to merchandise your material at no cost to them!

If there were any penalties for duplicate content 123 would have been long gone by now instead of number 1 consistently through all the little, medium and big daddies.

[Irishjim]

With all due respect to incrediblehelp's comments, I'm throwing my chit into the babble.

The duplicate content penalty came home to me in quite an interesting way this week when I noticed all my village pages beginning with "Bally," on my Irish tourism site, www.tourclare.com had vanished from the radar.

I thought it would be nice for you Yanks to know Bally referred to a form of community crop rotation practiced in pre-famine days, so I put a blurb on all these village pages with a bit of history on the term and bingo, every one of them went from #1 listings to banishment overnight.

That new Bigdaddy algorithm is good.

I only put original content on my site unless it's a link to another page and then I modify the anchor text.

This one, however, blew my mind. I'd like to have a quick word with the bullocks who coded this gem for Google.

Needless to say, all of you will have to do your Irish research on the word Bally yourselves now. It's good I didn't explain how "Kil" means church in Irish.

Slan go foill

[Cyrus255]

There definitely is NOT a duplicate content penalty.

It's rather hilarious actually.

I had a page, with the first letter capitalized. APPARENTLY I had some links pointing to a non-capitalized version and with PHP it dynamically created that non-capital version.

SAME CONTENT, but it started whooping the other ones in ranking because it was fresher since it was a recent accidental creation. Earned me an extra $10,000 above normal earnings cuz of an accident.

[Irishjim]

I think you may be off topic, Cyrus, although I think your earning ability is brilliant.

Google seems to ignore duplication in PHP. I have RSS feeds duplicating info on many of my pages and none of them suffer.

Slan

[Cyrus255]

Originally Posted by Irishjim

I think you may be off topic, Cyrus, although I think your earning ability is brilliant.

Google seems to ignore duplication in PHP. I have RSS feeds duplicating info on many of my pages and none of them suffer.

Slan

I was pointing out that by merely replicating the same page uncapitalized (by accident) I recieved a major boost in ranking. For freshness.

So there was no penalty for the exact same page being duplicated on my site.

I'm seriously thinking of creating pages with a different letter capitalized for each page. They are static pages with a .html ending (through mod_rewrite)

Except I might get manually banned for that. haha.

[Irishjim]

You could be Google-shot just for thinking that, Cyrus.

Slan.

[Cyrus255]

Originally Posted by Irishjim

You could be Google-shot just for thinking that, Cyrus.

Slan.

GOOGLE: If you're reading this, I am sorry. I never meant to say that! I won't do it! It was purely an accident!

Please I have a family to feed! Well... just myself... but still!!


You know the scary part is, I'm not even really sarcastic...

[southplatte]

Well, I was just contacted by an SEO firm, that works with some pretty big clients and each has rankings in the top 10 for their selected words/phrases, and this is what the guy told me:

We create hundres of small pages on servers that we own, all which contain your keywords from your site pages, then we put small amounts of the content from your web site on those pages as well, and then link them to your web site. This, according to this guy, increases IBLs, keyword exposure and content exposure, without suffering duplicate content problems, if they do in fact exist.

Any thoughts on this in terms of duplicate content and what seems to be doorway pages?

[Irishjim]

We create hundres of small pages on servers that we own, all which contain your keywords from your site pages, then we put small amounts of the content from your web site on those pages as well, and then link them to your web site. This, according to this guy, increases IBLs, keyword exposure and content exposure, without suffering duplicate content problems, if they do in fact exist.

Any thoughts on this in terms of duplicate content and what seems to be doorway pages?[/quote]

Yes, here are my further thoughts. Google is clear they will allow collections of information from other sites if it is in multiple form.

It's the same thing Oscar Wilde said(I think it was him, although it could have been another brilliant Irish writer... there are so many of us).

Anyway, he said, if you steal from one writer, it's plagerism. If you steal from many writers, it's research.

slan

[SemAdvance]

My oh my is this one off the rocker

1. Content is not single words such as Bally (you didn't lose rankings due to that) or ALL CAPPED WORDS (your claims of earning $$$$$ from such goes against everything User Experience has taught us)

2. Content is typically several hundred words.

3. Google rankings are made up of over 100 parts as determined by Googles algorithim. Odd as this may sound nobody knows all 100 parts except the founders and a few engineers.

4. I don't know any SEO firms that would call you up and say they can't get top 10 rankings in the search engines. In fact if they are calling Google has posted their thoughts on this.

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...291&topic=8524

Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

"Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

There is most certainly a duplicate content penalty...what usually happens when caught is the page is filtered out of the top rankings. I know as I've dont it to myself.

What others have noted opposing is I believe is due to the time factor, because someone may have a month or two of sucess on Google, do not expect it to last long if not done by the Google guidelines. It takes Google some time but they do manage to catch the accidents, cheats, and spammers.

Write original content...post it on your server but available to the general public for a week or so...if you can link to it from your index page after a week or so...or move it to publish it online from another section you might use.

This allows Google and other bots to crawl and index your content and since it is all original, the bots will not see other versions of it online...once it is online, Google and others will know of it already and you will earn first posting credit.

Hope this helps.

[Irishjim]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

My oh my is this one off the rocker

1. Content is not single words such as Bally (you didn't lose rankings due to that) or ALL CAPPED WORDS (your claims of earning $$$$$ from such goes against everything User Experience has taught us)

2. Content is typically several hundred words.

Well then, Sem, I suggest you go back and read my post. This time read for content. I said I had duplicate content in the form of an explaination of the use of Bally in place names, such as Ballyvaughan, Ballyboefey, etc. I didn't say anything about using one word and worrying about it being duplicated.

Before you begin to edify, lad, learn to read.

Slan,

[DMC_34]

Originally Posted by Cyrus255

I recieved a major boost in ranking. For freshness.

I have never seen one shred of proof freshness of content causing a boost in rankings on Google at all.

About the only thing fresh content does its provide frequent indexing. That in itself does nothing to your Google position.

A few of my sites have the same exact content from 2 yrs ago and counting and still rank #1 on Google.

Fresh content and boost in rankings is a myth on Google.

DMC

[davidmg]

Like in the medical profesion any given industry is going to use the same words throughout all the business. You should choose to use alternate descriptive words. I am in the fireplace business for example there are over 20 "Black Wrought Iron Fireplace Tool Set" that look the same just different manufacturers or different sizes. You can call one a "UNIQUE Black Wrought Iron Fireplace Tool Set" another a "STYLISH Black Wrought Iron Fireplace Tool Set" etc but it is still a "Black Wrought Iron Fireplace Tool Set"

What I am saying is from website to website the robots see much the same thing. Unless whole pages are copied "word for word" will it raise a flag. In that case the first page indexed for that content should get it. Even if a few sentences are taken from a page it shouldn't make a difference.

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[Cyrus255]

Originally Posted by DMC_34

I have never seen one shred of proof freshness of content causing a boost in rankings on Google at all.

About the only thing fresh content does its provide frequent indexing. That in itself does nothing to your Google position.

A few of my sites have the same exact content from 2 yrs ago and counting and still rank #1 on Google.

Fresh content and boost in rankings is a myth on Google.

DMC

Not true. Freshness matters. Freshness of pages, OR links.

Does your site constantly put out new content via other pages?

Or it is also possible your pages continually recieve FRESH links pointing to it, which proves the article is still live and kicking.

As for my experience, it was the first time I put out a new page with a bunch of links to it, in a while. The fresh page was actually a copy, and recieved better ranking with ALL the same content.

You could actually see DUPLICATE pages on the same google search! Within the top 50! My same page only difference was capitalization the first letter!