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Demystifying the the "duplicate content penalty" - Officially
SEO News Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
Published: Sep 14, 2008 - 02:00 pm
Story Found By: JohnWeb 1709 Days ago
Category: SEO
From the post, "Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that."
 Comments7 Comments  

Comments

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from g1smd 1709 Days ago #
Votes: 0

No matter how many times you say it, you’ll never get through to the "alt tag" (sic) and "dofollow" (sic) brigade.

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from JohnHGohde 1708 Days ago #
Votes: -3

"So when people say that having this type of duplicate content can affect your site, it’s not because you’re likely to be penalized; it’s simply due to the way that web sites and search engines work."The same can be said about the Google Sandbox, and for most penalties in general.  It is just how Google works.Site scraping is now an accepted way of life on the Internet.  There are at least two successful scrapes of Wikipedia, that resemble Category pages on a WordPress blog.  Scrape a site in an acceptable manner while adding user feedback and you can run a successful duplicate content website in Google.Google doesn’t like duplicate content. Whether you call it a penalty, filter, or just part of their algorithms; that is just how search engines work.  And, splitting hairs over whether it technically is what Google calls a penalty is just arguing over sematics.Screwing websites over with a smile is just how PC Google public relations statements work.

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from seogoogletips 1707 Days ago #
Votes: -2

This article did help make things a bit clearer, but I think JohnHGohde’s comment here is the most valuable info we can take away. Thanks John

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from hunteeer 1707 Days ago #
Votes: 0

I too am going to agree with JohnHGohde as well.  The information contained in the Google article is consistant with the warnings and type of duplicate content issues we discuss with our clients.  Hopefully others SE’s are explaining it simularly.I believe the article is very clear that the penalty is that if it is not unique content why would Google serve it up or attribute "credit" to a non-originating source.  How would a full page of the same content results benifit Google users?

Avatar Moderator
from Jill 1707 Days ago #
Votes: 0

seogoogletips, I disagree. The proper definitions (as I mentioned recently in my search engine land article) are very important.There’s enough confusion in SEO as is.

Avatar Moderator
from hugoguzman 1706 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Agree with Jill. It’s good to get things from the horse’s mouth.

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from JohnHGohde 1706 Days ago #
Votes: -2

@seogoogletips @hunteeer Thanks for your support.

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