Google - Duplicate Content Explanation // Telekinetic Marketing

Jared Alberghini
834 days ago

Thanks goes out to MissTerraK for bringing this video to our attention!

Sal

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Sal
834 days ago

I swear, this morning you gentlemen are making me look good in the spelling category. LOL

I never pay attention what anyone says - I will use dupe content any damn time I find any that is good content for my readers. I write most of my own, but sometimes I'll find an article on a submission site that has good info for my crowd. So I stick it on my WP -- with credits. It seems to me, not only illegal, but really badly anal to be afraid to admit someone else wrote the content. LMAO. Especially when mixed with your own.

It seems to me that people get so wrapped up in worrying about SEO, they forget the bottom line - which is your viewers. If it is going to be of interest and use to them, to goes on the site. I expect that when added to my own content it can't hurt to have extra. Whether the dupe brings in the traffic or not really doesn't matter because my own content does the SEO trick, then while on the site the viewer has more to keep them there and more value.

SEO is darned important - but not the bottom line. Google doesn't join memberships and google doesn't buy your products. Everything I do on my site is aimed directly at the viewer and the SEO follows that value.

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
834 days ago

LOL thanks Sal, and of course we can't edit the titles of posts here yet... another thing on the todo list...

As for your thoughts, what you are doing is Syndicating Content, (not "duplicate content") which is perfectly fine, and widely mis-understood.

The real meaning of "Duplicate Content" is when you have 2 or more identical pages on YOUR OWN site. Back in the day, people used this trick to gain high results in the SE's... by just duplicating thousands of the same pages on one domain.

Google or any other search engine isn't going to penalize you if you mistakenly have two of the same identical articles at your own site, but if they detect a pattern, and notice you trying to game the system by duplicating pages upon pages, like mypage.html mypage2.html mypage3.html, that's when you have to worry, and they DO remove these types of sites from the search index.

If you are a normal human that isn't out to "game the system" there is nothing to worry about.

Sal

Sal
834 days ago

Ah...well, then........................never mind.

Ya know.......I'm sorry, but that just sounds like stupidity actually, now that you explained it.

I wonder why so many people have such a huge voova over something this stupid? It's a business, just run your business and quit worrying about idiot tricks that will be slammed sooner or later and you'll get so much further ahead. Good cripes people..........quit drinking THAT water.

Tina Golden

Tina Golden
834 days ago

We get to see this argument over and over on the forum. I gave up saying anything because it's become pointless.

Is it water, Sal....or kool-aid? LOL

Sal

Sal
834 days ago

Might be Kool-aid, Tina......seems like it would take more than a tad of a sugar buzz to get someone spastic enough to purposely sit and duplicate page after page of a website. Well - you saw what I thought it meant and couldn't see the big deal over it...........now I have REALLLY lost the plot it seems.

At least I know I am doing the right thing refusing to drink kool-aid. Nice to be able to re-affirm my choices.

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
834 days ago

Sal, the bad thing is that there are tons of unscrupulous people purposely duplicating page after page, but it's all automated nowadays... through article spinners, dup content checkers, auto posters, etc, and they end up with a thousand page site, with basically one badly spun article...

This results in jibberish and crap filling up the web, which is not a good user experience which is one of Google's main concerns, for their search index, so they do actively remove crap from their index... the infamous "Google Slap". Don't forget, google still has actual human beings running the monster, and they ain't stooopid ya know... lol

So on the one hand, you've got folks creating softwares to game the google system, and they are spreading disinformation to unsuspecting consumers spreading the myth that every article needs to be unique... so "buy my product" (Which if used in a blackhat way, can be quite dangerous, since Big G can't watch everyone at all times... there are ways to slip past the radar so to speak ).

It really is quite the complicated mess, but I like to spread the word and explain the difference between the the meanings of "Duplicate Content" (identical pages on your own site, which G doesn't approve of if done excessively/blackhatish) compared to "Syndication" (Submitting an identical article to multiple news distribution services, which is perfectly fine)

P.S. Don't drink the Kool-Aid

Sal

Sal
834 days ago

Jared in my book "unscrupulous" is perfectly equivelent to "Stupid". Sure someone might get away with some jerked method like this in the short run- but sooner or later it's going to fold on them and then they've wasted time, moey, energy. Then they fill up forum pages with poor little abused me posts.

If people just can't figure out that they can't sustain a growing business indefineitely on smoke and mirrors, let em get fried for it. These dweebs are creating a foul stench wherever they land. We've seen what they have done to the WF. What a lark. I wish I had a mirror as complementary as theirs.

GT

GT
834 days ago

Great discussion, everyone. I agree that the focus should be on quality that appeals to the visitor (customer). SEO is important, but never lose sight of the reason for business - service to real people.

Jared - syndicated content sent to news distribution services is one thing, but what about Article Directories?

The debate I've seen about duplicate content revolves around sending the same article to numerous directories. Of course, well-known and reputable directories will not accept duplicate articles. But I suspect that many website owners who have articles directories on their site do not check the uniqueness of articles submitted for their directories.

The other debate I have seen concerning duplicate content is when you publish your own article on your own site, then submit the same article, unchanged, to article directories. Is that a concern? Some say it is.

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
834 days ago

GT, ok NOW we are getting into the meat of this discussion

Let me first distinguish that Article Directories ARE syndication distribution centers, where you can submit your content for syndication, and others can copy/paste your article and syndicate it on their own websites...(with proper credit/author bio box) just like tv shows that are syndicated on different channels/networks.

Google will not give you the google-slap if you submit the same exact article to 1,000,000 directories/syndication distribution centers. They actually give much google love if your content is syndicated everywhere.

Now to explain the debate you are mentioning, you are talking about the heirarchy of the many competing Article Directories, who each have their OWN special TOS. Right now EZA seems to be on top, and they sure don't want you posting to other competitor sites before them (they are fine with you posting your own content to your own website first). They want the fresh content at their site first, not their competitors, or else you get the EZA-Slap... lol.

Each article directory has their own special TOS, (& some have % of uniqueness algorithms) and I guess if you know which order to do it without stepping on toes, or overlapping TOS's from each site, there is no real need to rewrite articles to make them unique, but I'm not sure... it's a tricky topic, and the rules/TOS's change so often, it's hard to keep up.

I just say take care of number 1 first, always post your own content on your own site, and then go syndicate it. If they don't accept a non-unique article, there are a heck of a lot more places that are fine with it. If they want unique articles/content, I feel they should pay you for them like AssociatedContent.

Matt M

Matt M
833 days ago

Ok before everyone starts freaking out, Jared asked me to make a comment here :)

I promise not to get as frustrated as I was over there. I was being beat down by the "James Gang" and it is hard trying to respond to 14 different questions, none of which had addressed anything I was talking about.

For a long time now, people have been confusing Duplicate Content with Article, or content Syndication.

Some of the people giving me a hard time over there were playing a "word game" stating that articles are content and if we do not change the content then it is a duplicate of the original and therefore duplicate content.

Once they have established this new rule of the game, they went on to attack me because if syndication is the same as duplicate content and I say that you can be penalized for duplicate content then in their eyes with the "new rules" I was attcking syndication and stating that you would be penalized for syndication.

I spent two days trying to clear that up and defend the fact that I was not attacking syndication. Syndication is fine all across the board.

Google has a sepearte defination for syndication duplicate content. There are a few differnet types of duplicate content if you look at what Google says on their official blog and also on their Webmaster page.

One type of duplicat content that they refer to is the URLs with the www and the URLs without the www. This is the type of duplicate content that Matt Cutts has been responding to. Also the other type of duplicate content which is the same pages on your blog that appear in archives and places like that. People have been bombarding Google about duplicate content penalties when their pages have been moving around due to other factors.

Because of the huge amount of duplicate content questions they, Google started sending employess and representatives out to stop the bleeding on all of these complaints.

Now, the duplicate content issue I was trying to bring up. There is yet another type of duplicate content that Google recognizes and they do remove your pages for it. Even though they wanted to put a stop on using the term "penalty" because of all of the problems I mentioned above, there is still a form of "punishment" if you will, when it comes to this other type of duplicate content.

This "punishmnet" or "adjustments to your rankings" that Google calls it, come from duplicating your content over and over again in attempt to get a good ranking. Or as Google says "manipulate".

My whole point of jumping in that thread the other day was because it is quite possible for someone to in fact be removed for "duplicate content" but we have a group, well a very loud voice that states with absolute authority that in no way that it can be involved with duplicate content because it does exist.

If Google does "adjust rankings" and "remove" sites for "duplicate content" weather or not they call it a "penalty", then isn't it irresponsible to keep making these statements?

I thought that I would have a good chance at getting through to some folks by using citing Google's own words in black and white and gave the links.

When I asked people to go to the link and read what Google was saying then come back and we would discuss it.

But that didn't happen. Some folks returned with a video of Matt Cutts and used that to defend their position. Then I found myself trying to counter that and was falling behind the barrage of posts.

My mistake for trying to answer them all. I got frustrted and started to get confused.

But my next attempt at getting somebody, anybody to respond to the questions I had regarding what Google was saying at their site was to take the quotes myself from the Google site and present them one at a time in front of the group in the hopes that we would be able to discuss them.

Again, no response to the Google statements.

They had put words into my mouth, into Google's mouth and twisted things so badly that they were accusing me of all sorts of stuff that I have never said to anyone at anytime in the many years at the forum.

By the second day of this "beat down", I gave up.

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
832 days ago

Matt - LOL Sounds like you need to relax in The Lounge after that ordeal... http://www.telekineticmarketing.com/pg/groups/121/tm-the-lounge/

I'm sure you are sick of talking about the subject for a while, but when you get a chance, would love to discuss the quotes from Google you mentioned. Post them here sometime...

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

Here is the quick version :)

If you go to the Offcial Google blog here:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

Then look at the first four paragraphs (they are short)and you will see that Google does make adjustmenst based on what they call "tactics"

Then that page below that fourth paragraph in the bullet points you see this:

"Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content".

When you click that link that says "duplicate content" here:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359

On that page Google is defining the different types of duplicate content.

Down around the 5th paragraph that starts with "Google tries hard to index and show pages..." Read that paragraph and at the end it says this:

"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".

Now I don't know about you, but that sounds like a penalty to me.

Jeremy Kesall tried to pitch in and help me at one point but he saw it was futile.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

LOL Hey you need a spell checker in this place. I've gotten lazy since I do all of my writing on the computer now.

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
832 days ago

Question for you Matt,

Did you see anything about having 2 or more domains pointing to the same host? For example, if you have the .com, .net & .org, does google frown upon promoting the 3 different names? Do they simply pick the best one and drop the rest? To me it sounds like they wouldn't like this, but I'm not sure, haven't researched it thourougly. Wondering how to set this up properly... 301 redirects would probably be the best way...?

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

I never got to that part of it because it never concerned me. But I would think that they would treat it like any other URL duplicate. If it is the same content then why not just have one listed would be their question. And a valid one.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

I should delet my little rant above. There is no point to that. I just had to get it out :)

Now that it's out I really don't want to be at "war" with anyone over little things like this.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

yes I would think the redirects that Google talks about with the 301.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

Did you get a chance to glance at those Google paragraphs?

Now if you tell me that I'm crazy then I'm crazy. LOL

I respect your opinion and judgement.

Dave Patterson

Dave Patterson
832 days ago

I'm waiting to see if Jared noticed the reference to "Everyone Poops" farther down on the Google blog...r

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
832 days ago

No need to delete anything Matt, I completely understand, vent away here...

I did look at those pages, (still going through them now) and no, you are definitely NOT crazy. What better information about Google are you going to get by going direct to the source? LOL

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
832 days ago

LOL Dave... that is awesome... good find!

http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Poops-My-Body-Science/dp/0916291456

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

Hey that comment on the bottom by Paul Luther is me. I was still in that pen name writing something somewhere else and forgot to sign out and sign back in under my real name.

Anyway you can see what I said about their adding to the confusion.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

On more than one occasion I heard over at WF "I could care less about what Google thinks or says".

Fine, but stay out of the discussion then.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

LOL yes the "Everybody Poops" I cracked up the first time I saw it.

They definately need some better technical writers over there at Google.

They use subtle transistions that a lot of people scanning a page would not pick up on.

Like this:

"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".

This is the main problem with the confusion. I understand that they don't want to come right out and tell you how to get over on them in detail, but in their attempts to get rid of the complaints and qustions they got because of the term "penalty" they have turned it into a cluster f**k.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

Then they, Google, state adamantly that there is "no such thing", "unless".

They are trying to find a way to say it without really saying it. They expect that the average whitehat player would never have to worry about doing stupid stuff and getting yanked but they are not taking into account all of the naive people buying WSO's telling them it's ok to do this crap.

But the guy selling the WSO didn't know either because this "duplicate content penalty" myth stuff is spouted off loud and at every turn when you try to address it.

Then when they do lose their page and come back to the forum to find out what happened so they can make a correction, they are told it is definately NOT duplicate content.

When it could very well have been.

Jared Alberghini

Jared Alberghini
832 days ago

They must have drank the wrong Kool-Aid... poor souls...

Dave Patterson

Dave Patterson
832 days ago

Maybe Kurt will weigh in on this discussion....if anyone understands the big G it's him.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

So Dave,

what do you make of it? Does it appear that there is a penalty (negative consequences that could occur) LOL or what?

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

I realize that for me and you to do something that would get us removed from Google we would know that we were "manipulating". But you guys have seen the variety of people who have been showing up at the WF.

It's like they jumped in the deep end and I just hate to see them drown when they didn't even know they would.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

I think it's fine to let people know that they can syndicate their articles all over the place if they want to but then we need to inform them that if they try duplicating it on their site that they could face some repercussions.

So if we could show that there is something that Google calls duplicate content that is differnet from syndication then it makes it easier to be able to explain what those differences are.

As it is, if they believe that duplicate content is the same as syndication then how do you explain "manipulating content" without stating that you are duplicating it over and over on your page.

Seems like it would be easier to use a term that expalins it for you.

So when people ask me about submitting articles and they are worried about duplicate content I let them know that what they are talking about is syndication and that it is fine and ok.

Then go on to explain duplicate content and tell them that there is one type of duplicate content that can get them into trouble.

But if they have already bought into the "duplicate content is a myth" belief, then it takes about 20 more back and forth PMs to try and explain what manipulating content is without using the dreaded "duplicate" word.

Dave Patterson

Dave Patterson
832 days ago

They don't penalize you per se...they simply make you dissappear...LOL

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

Dave LOL yep

Sal

Sal
832 days ago

There's only so much you can help people, Matt. The fact is there are a lot of people on the net that really do not have the sharps to be in business for themselves. They WANT without understanding what they need to know to get there. They are typical "herd mentality" but don't see that far to understand that THEY are on the receiving end of exactly what they are trying to dish out.

You tried to tell them the difference - they lambast you for it, yet wonder why their site would disappear. Maybe some of them will think about it and see the light at a later date. Those that don't were just on the bottom of the food chain from the get and there isn't much you can do about it other than state things the way they are and let those sharp enough to make it take note of what you said.

It's not rocket science. Jared explained it just fine in two paragraphs. I just never realized the difference because I didn't realize someone would purposely duplicate info all over their own site. Doesn't seem anywhere near a lucid act of logic to me.

Don't get your panties in a bunch over anyone that can't grasp what you are saying. Those are the people who will just get sucked down the poop drain (just for you, Jared) on a different issue sooner or later if they ever make it past this one.

Matt M

Matt M
832 days ago

Sal you're so right.

it gets frustrating that you can see them sitting in the middle of the tracks and the train is coming.

But like you said, at one level in their head or another, they are willing to take the risk without even the slightest research.

Dave Patterson

Dave Patterson
832 days ago

"But like you said, at one level in their head or another, they are willing to take the risk without even the slightest research."

Thats because somewhere in their little pea-brain they have a little voice telling them that the 'net is "different"....money will just flow their way without any effort at all, they just need that one "magic bullet".

Ands it doesn't matter how many have failed before them...they STILL can't see the truth.

I can't explain it...but a LOT of marketers have turned that gullible crowd into a HUGE market...

Sal

Sal
832 days ago

I think it's time we stopped blaming the hype sellers for that one. There have been people around since way before computeres that figured they didn't need to know jack about jack and just looked for the next get rich scheme after the next get rich quick scheme.

Look at the gold rush. How many thousands died frustrated and broke because they went out to search out the gold without knowing the first damned thing about gold prospecting? It was just supposed to stick to them as they walked by.

If ya browse the WF these days check out all the ethics questions or complaints. People whine because they never once got enough of an education to put a sentence together correctly - but it's the submission sites who are the blame for not posting almost completely undecipherable trash. Its the fault of websites that ban them that they couldn't figure out that the TOS not to post spam on the site meant not to post spam on the site. Instead of figuring that out, they waste time trying to figure out how to pull a "trick" on that site to slide past the TOS. When they get caught they scream to high hell and back and everyone is supposed to be sympathetic that "poor little me" got abused.

Check out how many people ask "is this ethical" when what they are asking is how to legally steal something from someone else.

I say let them drown. It's far more productive to let people that lazy, greedy, self-centered, and ignorant just plain disappear from the scene than it is to help them proliferate and attract more just like them. Slime mold has a way of growing to uncontrollable proportions if you don't smite it early.

It's way past time we just let those with no sense or ethics flounder than to waste time and effort helping them proliferate. It's not doing them or anyone else any good to have them around. You can't have the top of the food chain without the bottom of the food chain and we are really fooling ourselves if we think we can help the masses. Some people were just meant to have jobs. If they can't tell that stealing is wrong or some tricks such as duplicate pages on websites are not a great idea, they are people who are meant to take orders working for others. That's the reality of it.

Why bang your head against a wall for nothing? If someone can't "get it" move on to the others that stand a chance.

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