Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties
January 18, 2005 – 3:00 amDuplicate Content Penalties
By: James Peggie and Dylan Downhill
Originally Published: Jan 18, 2005
Updated: Jan 30, 2005
Fact: Google penalizes page rank when it determines that content is duplicated by other sites.
If your rankings have slipped then it’s possible that your page contents have been duplicated causing a duplicate content penalty. Google doesn’t want multiple copies of the same content cluttering their results pages so they will devalue all but one of the copies of the content based on the age of the page.
Don’t Let Other People Benefit From Your Hard Work
Writing good quality content for your site is hard work! If someone has not paid you for your work (either with money or with a reciprocal link or other agreed payment) it is stolen!
Checking For Duplicate Content
It is a chore to check for duplicated content but luckily someone has come to the rescue – www.copyscape.com. Just by entering the URL of the page you want to check, Copyscape will return a list of pages in the Google index that contain text also present on your site, or for more detail you can subscribe to their Copysentry service.
No one knows how much duplication can result in a penalty, if it’s 10 words, 20, a paragraph or a whole page. You will need to make a decision on whether you believe you have a problem. A lot of time your marketing text will appear as a description for a link to your site – this probably won’t be counted as duplicate content. If your site’s position in the search engines has recently plummeted then duplicate content might be the cause or if a competitor is found for text or an article you wrote then you may also have an issue.
What To Do With Duplicate Content?
If you are hosting someone else’s content and you’re seeing duplicate content put a ‘robots’ meta tag in the head section to stop the search engine spiders indexing that page. If you’re tempted to modify the content then you will need to get the original author’s permission. A much better option would be to take the central idea of the article and write a completely new article using your own text.
If you’re concerned that someone has duplicated your content, write to the website owner who has published your content requesting they remove the offending text, you can mention that you will report the matter to Google under their DMCA guidelines.
If the email does not elicit a response or your content is still visible then report the duplicate content issue to Google under the DMCA guidelines they provide at http://www.google.com/dmca.html
If all else fails, change your copy of the duplicated text. Keeping your copy fresh is essential so make the best of a bad situation and write even better copy.
Tips To Ensure You Avoid Duplicated Content
- Put a copyright notice on the bottom of the page and warn that you check for duplicated content.
- If you have multiple domains that point to the same site content take advantage of permanent redirection. (301 status report) This informs the spider of the redirection so they understand you are not putting up duplicate content.
- When you have an article to get republished on other sites send them in a text format. (Articles are a great way to quality incoming links by the way!) This ensures that when the article is republished it will be reformatted and viewed by the search spiders as original.
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17 Responses to “Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties”
This is great information. Thanks for being to helpful!
By Michael Cruz on Aug 14, 2008
Does Google Translate effective?
By Random Blog on Sep 13, 2008
Hi, nice info, however I believe that There is no such as thing called “Duplicate Content Penalty”. http://www.clarencewang.com/blog/internet-marketing/there-is-no-such-thing-called-duplicate-content-penalty/
By Clarence on Sep 13, 2008
Like mentioned above. Google has denounced the
“duplicate content” penalty.. to an extent.
By Domain Structure on Oct 9, 2008
Yes, but what is internet, getting pieces of information and making them at one place (aggregating) for others to see.
when i did copyscape search on my site , i found that the bits of news i had put, was also in some 10 more websites, are we all being penalised ??
I don’t believe in penalising for duplicate content.
By aaditya on Dec 30, 2008
It is a hard problem for any search engine to crack – who was the original content writer and who should get the credit for the work. Currently it seems to be based on where they saw it first and the reliability of the sites involved. Simple content aggregaters are easy enough to spot, its the ones who modify your content just enough to pass duplicate content checks that’s the problem. Your only come back is to file a DMCA report against infringing sites. What I tell my clients is if the site gives you a link back then leave it alone, if they don’t then file a DMCA against them.
By Dylan on Dec 30, 2008
I do not subscribe to the view that “there is no duplicate content penalty” mainly as I have seen it happen.
Also, the site that had copied the content was left alone and the “victim site” was blacklisted from Google and Yahoo.
It took substantial effort and negotiation to resolve the situation, which meant that the site was out of the engines for 4 months!
Had our client been genuinely guilty, it is extremely unlikey that this penalty would have been lifted.
Duplicate if you dare but I’m not taking the chance again.
By Pete Gronland on Jan 29, 2009
In regards to the duplicate content part of this blog post, I personally use the http://www.copygator.com website to find and stop duplicate content:
1. it’s automated and brings me results instead of me searching for duplicated content. All i had to do was submit my feed and it started monitoring my feed showing me who’s republished my articles on the web.
2. i get notified by email so it contacts me when it finds copies of my articles online.
3. i use their image badge feature to alert me directly on my website when my content is being lifted.
4. it’s a free service as opposed the “per page” cost of copyscape/copysentry.
By James S on Feb 2, 2009
It’s about time someone is doing something about plagiarism. Thanks for letting me know about these sites.
By Hostgator WebHosting on Apr 21, 2009
Very good information and I have been using copyscape.com since a long time.
DEV
By Dev Duff on Apr 28, 2009
Duplicate content-what a problem for guys like myself who are not very good at blogging and even like it less,to be able to come up with my own content it’s like trying to reinvent the wheel.So were does a person find the information on those affiliate products we are marketing, do I go out and buy every item I am selling heck I will be in the poor house.
By Kenneth Young on Jul 10, 2009
I posted some articles on isnare and ezinearticles. Should i stop posting articles there?
By biz on Jul 11, 2009
Your best bet is to do some searches for your keyword and see if any article sites show up. If you’re very niche look for other keywords. If the site shows you up know it isn’t banned, it has reasonable authority. This doesn’t mean it passes link juice but you should submit anyway.
By Dylan on Jul 20, 2009
I still find this topic to be somewhat questionable. There are still some that say it may not be all true. But why take a a chance? Original content will add value to your website.
By Building A Shed on Aug 3, 2009
I’m concerned about duplicate content within one of our sites (not a blog), obviously all pages are more or less related to the same subject and have many similarities, yet they are different for the users. I haven’t seen it do anything negative (yet anyway) to the site, but now I’m wondering if I should start adding no index on some of the pages.
By Rit on Oct 9, 2009
I have found Copyscape invaluable for finding duplicate content that has been lifted from my site and use it on a regular basis. I also use Article Checker as well.
By Mark Washburn on Dec 7, 2009