What is duplicate content?
The first question you may be asking is what is duplicate content? Well duplicate content generally refers to a substantial block of content within or across multiple domains that either completely matches or is appreciably similar. Most of the time this is not intended to be malicious in origin but there are other times when people are trying to manipulate search engines results so they duplicate content.
So what isn’t duplicate content?
Content that is written in Spanish and also in English will not be considered as duplicate content. As well if you have the occasional snippets (quotes and otherwise) this will not be considered as duplicate content either.
So why does Google care about duplicate content?
The reason why they care is because they want to provide to their users diverse content if possible. They want a wide range of information so people get what they are looking for. If people get duplicate results they will not be satisfied and neither will Google. So Google tries to make the experience the best it can be for the users who use Google.
What does Google do about duplicate content?
Well there has been a myth for a long period of time going around that Google would completely ban your site and unindex it if you had duplicate content but this is not the case. In reality what happens usually is the less desired result will fall in the index and not be ranked as highly as the desired results. In rare cases some duplicate content will be removed from the index but this is the case when the content was made to manipulate Google rankings and deceive the users. So if you aren’t trying to do this type of thing then having your content published in multiple locations on the internet is fine!
What can you do to proactively address duplicate content issue?
Well here are a few things you can try to have less duplicate content on the net:
- Block appropriately: you can block certain pages from being displayed in Googles index with a robots.txt file. You can do this for duplicate pages such as a print version of a page that doesn’t need to be in Google’s index
- Be consistent with links: try to be consistent with your internal links. Don’t link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm
- Minimize repetition: For instance, instead of putting the copyright on the bottom of all your pages you could put a summary and have a link to the full copyright page
- Avoid publishing blank pages: if you are creating a page and it doesn’t have any content or does not have complete content then don’t publish it till it is finished. This will help Google bots index only the pages it needs to
- Don’t fret: If there are people that are copying the content of your website you should be fine. Don’t worry about them affecting the rank of your pages. It may be annoying but will be highly unlikely to affect the rank of your site in a negative way
Have I used duplicated content?
Short answer. Yes!
I have duplicated a bunch of my content across websites. Such as posting content in my blog and then publishing it in article directories and forums. I usually wait a few weeks after I post it in my blog before I post it else where because I would like to get the original post indexed higher then the other pages but I think posting in more than one place is good. It is good because it drives different types of traffic to your blog. You do not want to rely on one type of traffic to support you website. If you do and that one source for one reason or another disappears you will end up losing all of your traffic.
Summary
So to sum this all up. Google will not penalize you for duplicate content as long as it is not done in a manipulative way that will deceive the users of Google. It may lower the rank of some pages in the index compared to others but will not ban the pages completely.
It’s hard to decide which page is duplication other page. Imagine you need to compare billions of page.
@Increasing blog traffic – thanks for the comment.
I agree at times it can be difficult to decide which page to index over another page but I am sure Google has enough technology to make the right decision most of the time.
This topic is quite hot in the net right now. What do you pay the most attention to while choosing what to write about?
@Ex Girlfiend – Yup this topic has been hot for awhile now I believe. As for picking topics for my blog. I just write about whatever I feel like writing about at any particular moment. I also write down my ideas of blog posts and then when I get a chance I write about them. When I can’t think of ideas for my blog I do some research and find some of the hottest topics people are talking about and write about them.
FANTASTIC!
In searching for sites related to work online and specifically comparison to work from home, your site came up.
@Jody – I hope you found the information on my site useful. If you have any suggestions of topics that you would like to see on my site that relate to working online feel free to share them with me and I will look into providing some of that information.
well, said but you haven’t said what shoule the percentage one should have while editing article.
For instance, if i am copying article from article directories, then what should be the % of unique content i should have?
HI looks very interesting! bookmarked your blog. john brightman
It did happen to me and it was definetly duplicate content. I was ranked first page for ‘do it yourself loan modification’ I popular key phrase. In doing some reasearch (I am new to the internet business), i had a ‘bright’ idea. I noticed other keyphrases that were search often per day but no competing pages. So I decided to clone my sales pages a few times and assign each the url for those keywords. I also tried to optimize each page to use those keywords. I did not touch my main page. Well, literally overnight I lost my ranking. From page one to 14!. Naturally I am planning on removing them today…Will my rankings return? and how long will it take?
Thanks
Hi JP – I am sorry to hear about your content moving from the first page to the 14th page! That really sucks. How long did you wait before duplicating the content? Did you do it all at once? Like I mentioned in the post you need to make sure you space it out so those pages get index. As well I wouldn’t duplicate the same page too many times. If you duplicate the same content like 25+ times you will probably lose rank on some of the pages.
I think you did the right thing by taking some of them down. Right now only time will tell if your rank will go back. I think if you wait long enough it is possible it could go up. That really depends on what Google is doing to their algorithms at the time. They change all the time on how they rank pages. I would just suggest in the future you be care when duplicating content. I do it every once in awhile but I don’t do it all the time.
Good luck.
@John – thanks for bookmarking my blog! Hopefully this post was helpful.
Hi,
Nice post. This is an issue that is widely discussed over the Internet. Personally, I think Google does not penalize duplicate content. There are so many websites on the Internet and there will deem to be duplicate content.
@Joanne – I am glad you enjoyed the post.
I’ve done a lot of tests myself and as far as I can see Google does not penalize duplicate content but it just ranks it lower then other content if it isn’t original.
Thanks for this nice article..since last one hour i m just reading your blog..and it is having good information..here I m having one question..you use to post your article at different different article directories..may i know the name of those article directories..?? you can write here or else you can email me..thanks for all…
Hey Rahul Jain – thanks for the comment.
Here are a bunch of article directories you can start with that are good.
1: EzineArticles.com
2: Buzzle.com
3: ArticleDashboard.com
4: Amazines.com
5: IdeaMarketers.com (because of their bidding system)
if its really right, i believe its really a good news.
I have a related question that wasn’t really addressed. Say you have a blog, and some content on one post is duplicated from another website. Will that affect the entire blog’s ranking, or just the post, or just the results for the targeted keyword?
Also, does it just not get as much weight, or is it an automatic rank lower? Say I’m trying to rank for keyphrase “blue widgets”. If I post some duplicate content targeting “purple and blue widgets”, will it affect my overall ranking for “blue widgets”?
Hey WritingFerret – thanks for commenting.
There are plenty of blogs/websites that will duplicate your content and based on their website rank and host fast they steal your content will depend how their site ranks for that content and how your site will rank with the same content.
By doing case studies myself I’ve seen that sometimes I can paraphrase a websites content and get my page ranked higher then the original site but usually for the most part it doesn’t affect their original website much. If anyones rank will go down it is normally the person who took the content. Google can tell when your content is posted and they do a very good job in ranking your site properly.
So overall I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Your content should be fine!
InterestingI had never thought the simple ways the big G worked in. The truth of the affair is that Search Engines looks at your page numerous times, it still takes a tonne of work on your part in order to get a page to become interesting to the spiders. I guess this adds to my understanding of Google!
I usually submit 300 word articles on article directories to help me gain backlinks and readers.`’-