Duplication Of Content On Google

I always keep up to date with SEO trends on Google by monitoring what Matt Cutts has to say about various SEO topics using the Google search engine. I also listen to what Greg Grothaus has to say as he is a Search Quality Software Engineer who works for Google. I recently studied one of Greg's videos about the myth around duplication of content on Google. I was wondering whether sending the same content to different content submission areas like press release, article, forum and blog companies would be considered duplicate content.

These content submission companies all have and create different urls for content submissions compared to creating many domains that have the same domain name but differ slightly with their extensions and or sub domains and then placing the same content on them. Greg Grothaus's video can be viewed at youtube.com/watch?v=6hSoXutuj0g and I ask all serious SEO professionals to comment on and to discuss whether they agree with me or not.

Looking forward to your comments.

Duplicate content will not penalize you. Google just ignores pages with duplicate content after having indexed the original page. Think of it like this: if I go to a car dealership and see one red Corvette, it sticks in my mind. But if I go to another dealership and see 50 red Corvettes, which stands out? I will probably remember the first one I saw and ignore the rest.

WOWAustin: Duplicate content will not penalize you. Google just ignores pages with duplicate content after having indexed the original page. Think of it like this: if I go to a car dealership and see one red Corvette, it sticks in my mind. But if I go to another dealership and see 50 red Corvettes, which stands out? I will probably remember the first one I saw and ignore the rest.

That makes really good sense. Thanks for sharing.

Tal

All good to know, thanks for info. I am just getting into affiliate marketing and was wondering about this because I submitted an article that had similar content to my squidoo lens.

WOWAustin: Duplicate content will not penalize you. Google just ignores pages with duplicate content after having indexed the original page.
I agree! And when I look at the term "duplicate content" I think of rss feeds. Why would web sites accept "content" from other sites if duplicate content was so bad?

From what I can tell, it looks like duplicate content only is a problem if it is on the same site. I know this goes against what most will tell you out there, but it has been my experience that I have been able to get the exact same content ranked on different sites, but not on the same site.

I think duplicate content is unneccesary. There's nothing wrong with it; it just says that you aren't clever enough to attract a crowd with genuine, original content. Become a masterful writer and you won't have to duplicate.

That being said if it works for you, use it.

Ryan, I'm curious to know why you think having duplicate content ranked is the sign of someone who is not "clever"? The duplicate content I have ranked for in the past on multiple sites has actually been articles of mine that have been republished by others. Writing quality content that others want to post on their sites seems pretty clever to me

WOWAustin: Duplicate content will not penalize you. Google just ignores pages with duplicate content after having indexed the original page. Think of it like this: if I go to a car dealership and see one red Corvette, it sticks in my mind. But if I go to another dealership and see 50 red Corvettes, which stands out? I will probably remember the first one I saw and ignore the rest.
What a great comparison, thank you.

Yep, this is how it works. Once Google sees the content once it ignores the rest of it. Your backlinks will still count and your content will be collecting more eyeballs from multiple sites but it's not going to hurt or help you in Google's eyes.

From what I have learnt and seen, duplicate content is a big issue when it is there in your website. If you send duplicate contents to different PR / Article sites, there are not going to kick you off.

Please understand how corporates behave. They release one PR and this circulates among all media websites. They link to the source and since they are duplicate, will google kick the corporate. No right, it is not about duplicate content in off page submission.

However on the other hand, you can not create and submit the same article to 500 article directories. Then it will look really odd. Try to limit your submission of same contents to some numbers.

Hope this helps.

If you are smart enough...you can use duplicate content to get high quality backlinks.

I find duplicate content very effective to get high quality backlinks.

And please don't tell me that you can't get high quality backlinks from duplicate content...it's easy and very powerful

ericsquest: Ryan, I'm curious to know why you think having duplicate content ranked is the sign of someone who is not "clever"? The duplicate content I have ranked for in the past on multiple sites has actually been articles of mine that have been republished by others. Writing quality content that others want to post on their sites seems pretty clever to me
Oops....didn't understand the full meaning of duplicate content Eric. I felt that it might submitting the same article to multiple sites. In my book having something republished isn't duplicating it because you are not trying to re-create it; someone else is doing so for you. Kind of like a RT on twitter. Thanks for clearing that up!

Hi All,

Duplicate content was a major issue and i still think it is. I am not sure if it is not a problem. I will do more research on that.

But Google has many ways to avoid duplicate content on wbsite like cannonical tag in the meta tag section etc. This indicates, still it is a issue otherwise google would not have bothered to give out new ways to avoid duplicate content.

But Website will not be banned by google, if the content is similar on web pages.

Duplicate content is avoided becuse back links gets devided between two web pages. Consider you have 2 web pages A and B. A has original content and B has content of A.

By mistake two visitors get A and B web pages while searching some info. They find it good and they link back, one to A another to B.

If there wasn't two pages on the same content, page A would have got both the links, the vaule of the web page would have been higher. This is one reason why duplicate content should eb avoided.

And about articles etc, yes submitting same article to many directory is of no use because google will consider only one or two website aritlces as valid, rest as duplicate you do not get any value out of it.

Thank You,
Norma

Duplicate content is one of the biggest misnomers on the internet!

Here's the way that I see it..
Duplicate content is fine (won't get you banned). Here's the deal.. You can't go nuts with it..
If you copy / paste and post the same article on 15 sties with backlinks to your page.. Google may see that as spamming. And probably wont' list 10-12 of those copy paste articles.
I'm not sure how they look at it for backlinks / page ranking.. But for listings its probably not the greatest idea.


Margo, care to share your tips with the community?

If Google doesn't penalize duplicate content, which seems to be the consensus on the net these days, then why does it close the adsense accounts of thousands of content producers who use duplicate content?

Google will close your adsense account in a second, without providing a reason, and you will never get it back. No duplicate content penalty?

Duplicate Content is the big issue after Google panda update ...

I don't think that is going to work, at all. Duplicate content has its way of coming back to haunt you. One way or the other it's not good. Maybe spinning is a better alternative, it at least makes the article somewhat unique. But in SEO, it's better to safe and choose quality over quantity.

Yep, Google is updating regularly, so why waste your time creating duplicate content?

Generally speaking, Google penalizes duplicate content. How the penalty works is a Google secret. That said, here's a little experiment you can do to see how Google would react in your situation. Drop the duplicate content from the site where it's least relevant, and track your position in the SERPs. You'll have to give the bot time to spider both sites again, possible twice. Before you start removing content, check how much of each site is indexed, to see if you're even risking the duplicate content penalty. If not, the pages might not get spidered in the future either. You may still want to try the experiment above as a precaution.