[duggieuk]

Hi
We all know that Google hates duplicate content. What happens if i write my own unique content and then it is copied onto other sites. Even though my site had the content first does google know this or can you get penalised for having duplicate content?
Thanks

[Spitfire]

Absolutely nothing will happen. There are no penalties for duplicate content, it's a myth perpetrated by dodgy SEO 'Experts' so they can peddle their black/grey hat services.

http://googlewebmast...nt-penalty.html

This post has been edited by Spitfire: 03 November 2011 - 07:19 PM

[BlueDreamer]

Google doesn't "hate", it's just a bit choosy with what it indexes and lists

[rallport]

Spitfire, on 03 November 2011 - 07:18 PM, said:

Absolutely nothing will happen. There are no penalties for duplicate content, it's a myth perpetrated by dodgy SEO 'Experts' so they can peddle their black/grey hat services.

http://googlewebmast...nt-penalty.html

There's no penalty per se, but with the whole area of content duplication you need to think about results quality. In short, Google wants to present the most unique, relevant and compelling results possible to it's users. If they aren't doing this, then they fail. Why would Google want to fill it's first page of results with 10 duplicated pages? It doesn't help the user in the least.

There are no penalties for "non malicious" duplicate content (as Google phrases it) E.g. product.php?sort=price and products.php?sort=name etc. as these are fairly common and can be sorted pretty quickly using the canonical url tag

However, what is telling, in my opinion and relevant to the OP is a small passage from Google own web guidlines at http://www.google.co...py?answer=66359 :

Quote

In most cases Google does a good job of handling this type of duplication. However, you may also want to consider content that's being duplicated across domains. In particular, deciding to build a site whose purpose inherently involves content duplication is something you should think twice about if your business model is going to rely on search traffic, unless you can add a lot of additional value for users.

Additionally, they explicitly say in their quality guidlines at http://www.google.co...?answer=35769#3 :

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

You should be careful when purposly submitting duplicate content a few reasons in my opinion:

• It dilutes link juice
• Google will always be able to find the original source of the site
• Having duplicate content will lower your sites overall performance in the SERPs - I mean why wouldn't it. Purposly added duplicate content is exactly what the Google supplemental index is for imo.

Duplicate content is one of those shady areas I personally wouldn't want to be getting involved in.

[weblink]

I think the effect will be seen on SERPs the rating of page u posted the content first will be good rather than on others you copy n pasted.

[brightonmike]

I get sent PR for my music site. It's usually pre-written. Whilst I try to keep my content original, sometimes I do publish PR.

This doesn't seem to be discussed in that Google blog post - but could it affect me negatively?

[neil0wen]

You got nothing to worry about. Google values original content and won't devalue it just because someone else has copied it.

[mOxby Design]

If your content is copied, firstly you have a right to complain and stand up against it.

The main SEO impact of duplicate content is the weakening of the potential ranking factor for the copied page, as another will be trying to compete with you. If your site is authoritative, people love to share it and is well linked to, then as the original writer you shouldn't be penalised.

And as a last resort you can always report the site who is copying you.

Of course... you could see copied content as an opportunity to get a link crediting you as the original author

[zed]

thread closed, SEO numpties were being drawn to it like flies...