I agree with Peter. There is no duplicated content penalty. But what if you have duplicated content whitin your site or especially your blog?

Yes, but Google doesn’t like duplicate web sites! It says so in the policy guidelines.
Free web sites that are duplicated “X” number of times don’t get listed.

I agree, although it is possible to get certain pages banned if another website directly lifted the copy without permission. One client of mine managed to do this, even though the process was torturous. Try the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Tricky.

However, if a press release publisher posts releases for their clients on their website, this is the version that gets top listing on Google. Anyone else who uses that press release could be listed very far down or not listyed at all.

Thank you for clearing up this misconception. Everyone should take the time to read your article, this would stop some of the nonsense that is causing a lot of confusion.

I think there needs to be some clarification on exactly what constitutes “duplicate content”.
In reading the Webmaster Guidelines, under “quality guidelines” it still says “Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content”.
Your article will now allow all the desperate lemmings out there to start creating duplicate sites and content in a mad attempt to dominate the SERPS. I know first hand of competitors who use mulitple domains to hawk their products as fake review and doorway sites and get away with it, ranking multiple sites on page one, all with substantially duplicate content, so yes, either Google is too lazy to filter those results or their algo does not work to support their guidelines. Perhaps there is no longer a penalty, but there USED TO BE, and I know of it first hand. The best practice is to follow the webmaster guidelines in the very likely event that Google will change their policy.

I believe there is a penalty if the duplicate content is within your site or blog. But I will check if I can find information about that on Google.

I think through duplicate content we can’t get ranking. We need unique and excellent content.

If you have two pages on your web site with the same content, you run the risk of allowing Google to select which page to include in the index. They may not always include the “best” page from your standpoint, and therefore, may ignore a higher level page that due to other factors may rank better. Some see this as a penalty, I think it has more to do with letting the automated process choose the winner. Avoid the duplicate content, and you won’t have the issue!

“Duplicate Content” is sometimes referred to as canonicalization which is actually duplicate content and it does have an effect your site. If I have a site that has 3 different versions of the same page for instance homepage.com, http://www.homepage.com and homepage.com/index you are relying on Google to pick which one it wants to show. If your goal is to have your page rank high within the search engines then you want one authoritative page to which you can gain backlinks. Well if you have 3 different versions of the same page then people will most likely link to different pages giving you much less “link juice”. So while Google may not dish out a penalty there are certainly ramifications of having duplicate content. I realize this post is more about copying content from another site and putting it on your own but I figured I would throw this out there.

We were just discussing repurposing our articles and videos in our marketing meeting. Now I’ll have to update my team with this news. Thanks for the info!

Cheers, this is great! Although I create all original content for my site and all the on-line writing I do, it’s still good to get an update on Google’s policies in a simple way

I’m glad to see this misconception put to rest, but your article is mostly geared toward article/blog content. Thousands of marketplace vendors who list at sites like Bonanzle, Etsy, Ecrater, and the like are deeply concerned that if the same item is listed in two places and they’re “caught” by Google, all of their feeds will be shut down. How much of this is true and how much a myth?

I can’t seem to get any clarification on this from Google…I do wish someone would just explain clearly!

Thanks for the very informative article.

I agree with you about the duplicate content penalty. However, to say that AdWords advertisers aren’t Google’s customers is a bit foolish. While “those seeking information” may drive Google search, AdWords advertisers pay the bills.

I agree that there is no duplicate content penalty, but why have duplicate pages? All it does is spreads out incoming links when they could all be on the same page.

oh
I thinks it’s so hard
because i sometimes i find some articles is so good so i want to copy it
thanks a lot

Your condescending tone and purpose here, I suppose addresses those professionals of us out there who may have ruffled your ego feathers or whatever the reason for your naive blathering and misleading diatribe. It would be ROFLMAO-able were it not for the mis-information you’ve passed on to less informed readers here. However,your reference to Google’s ‘customers is simply “dumb.” They are USERS, not customers. Their customers are those of us who support their corporation with web based advertising and comprise 99% of their revenue. Yes 99%…please put it into perspective.

The author should clarify that this pertains to Google web search, not Google Products/Google Shopping. The program policies are very clear for submitting to Google Products:
Duplicate and borrowed content

We do not permit duplicate products in the same account or between multiple accounts. If products are available on multiple sites under the same ownership, one site must be chosen to exclusively submit those products. For example, if you own two websites that sell the same product, you may not submit that product for both sites, regardless of pricing or promotional differences. If you have one product (such as a memory card) that is compatible with multiple systems (such as different cameras), we require that you list that product only once – supported models can be listed using the compatible_with attribute.

http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160074

Great article! Makes complete sense!

Thank you for that clarification on Google Shopping vs. web search. I do appreciate it!

Thank you SO MUCH for your article on duplicate content….NOT! It really has cleared up a lot of fear and confusion/frustration in my mind and taken off a burden that I picked up along the way of reading many other articles about the penalty of duplicate content! … And the Truth shall set you free!

Thank you for clearing this once and for all. I have this misconception for quite some times.

I don’t buy it! I think you’re off base here dude. I personally sent one of my clients past the 250 spot on Google SERP’s by purposely copying a competitor’s content on only 3 pages and got jacked within a week! We were ranked a strong #4 for a very popular keyword/phrase. I put up 3 pages of copied content and BAM! in the gutter! No other changes were made either positive or negative. You got some splainin’ to do Lucy!

This article explains why when I started differentiating content between my sites they suddenly started ranking so much better.

Confuse! I had posted an article on my blog and after some time some posted the same content on other site. The other one is doing well, got PR as well.

Really, when we read Google guidelines duplicate content is not something harm. But the originality of our page will increase the value of our site.

An excellent article i found to clear up this duplicate content mystery once and for all.

The truth about duplicate content and its influence on site’s ranking has long been discussed in the SEO world. The truth is that there is no penalty as such. The harm of using content found already on the web is that you are lowering your chances of ranking better have you used an original, quality content.

Thank you.. Yes, but Google doesn’t like duplicate web sites! It says so in the policy guidelines.

How Google identify that which content is original as i have seen many website has same content.

found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later

I’ve read SitePRO News for years. You guys are awesome.

This post was very informative, as are all of your posts. I always wondered about the Duplicate Content Penalty people spoke of.

Thanks a ton!

I can see where this would apply, for example, with paid vs. free press releases. A paid release will generally appear more authoritative against a free release of the same content, so it should win the search engine ranking battle. There isn’t necessarily a penalty for duplication.

Thanks for the info!

I think we need to clear up the difference between ‘duplicate websites’ and ‘duplicate content’. This article clearly says that the more authoritative link will be provided to the user. If you have two websites containing the same content, then yes, Google may pick one over the other and display that one. The duplicated website wasn’t “penalized” per-say but Google has to select which one they suggest to the user, and they’ll likely choose the most authoritative one. I think the topic of discussion was using articles and other content throughout your website.

If 20 attorneys all have the exact same website in the same geographic area, Google may not display all of them if there are other attorney websites with unique content. They want to give their users choices. However if those 20 exact website are spread out geographically and have the geographic headings, titles, etc.. in the website replaced it likely won’t affect local search results even though a significant portion of the content exists in multiple places if Google finds it relevant they will link to it.

And in regards to the “who Google’s customers are” discussion –
Google advertising only exists because of it’s users. While advertisers provide 99% of the revenue, without it’s users that revenue stream would disappear. Their main asset is their dominance in the search market – not by revenue but by users. If people decide Bing or Yahoo provide better results, that’s where they will go and the advertisers will follow. We don’t advertise on Google because it’s the cool thing to do, we advertise on Google because potential customers use it. That’s why the author says the users are the only thing that matters (not in those words)

I don’t claim to know “the” answer to this. But from what you’re writing and what Matt Cutts has written I believe the “correct” answer is that when you create duplicate content you will BY NATURE dilute the authority of each copy.

So it isn’t a “penalty”, it’s a naturally-occurring problem of your own making.

Jeff Yablon
President & CEO
Answer Guy and Virtual VIP Computer Support, Business Change Coaching and Virtual Assistant Services

Answer Guy and Virtual VIP on Twitter

It is really good.
Thanks

With the advent of Blogging, Google seems to be less aggressive with the duplicate content stuff. All we see is the oldest content is returned first in a search, and the duplicates will be further back in the search results.

thanku for ur good posting , keep going on.

I’m a novice web designer. If I make a template and set some parts of it as “non-editable region” like the header, sidebars and footers, which means it appears in all pages attached to that template, would Google see it as duplicate content?

Have a great day everyone.

Just wanted to add an excerpt from this page http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359:

On dupe content (from Google):

As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

OK that’s fine….no “penalty. BUT, go ahead and copy content from other sites that create thier own ORIGINAL content but do not come crying to us when you can not rank as well as the other site that you copied content from. “original content” is king and always will be!!!

Cindy

Well after the Google Panda update, it is now official that duplicate content is penalized by Google.

However, if a press release publisher posts releases for their clients on their website, this is the version that gets top listing on Google. Anyone else who uses that press release could be listed very far down or not listyed at all.