Comments on: Should you be worried about Duplicate Content?

By: Fred Romano

Fred Romano — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:21:02 +0000

Regarding this topic from Google…

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html

“I’d like to point out that in the majority of cases, having duplicate content does not have negative effects on your site’s presence in the Google index. It simply gets filtered out.

By: Jack Leblond

Jack Leblond — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:03:00 +0000

Worried about duplicate content? http://kl.am/iJ8

By: Louise Scoggins

Louise Scoggins — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:18:17 +0000

Jack, great post! I have had problems with duplicate content in the past on one of my websites with 2 different agents / websites in my area. Literally they “copied and paste” verbiage I had personally written on some of my “city” pages…no kidding it was word for word. Luckily my webmaster (also my husband) frequently checks our sites for duplicate content and we were able to get the issues resolved by sending a few terse emails to the offending site. Thanks for bringing this issue to other agent’s attention!

By: Jack Leblond

Jack Leblond — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:55:12 +0000

@Joe – Once a sailor, always a sailor. What “mistakes” are you making?

@Ken – Thanks! Glad you found this useful.

@Greg – I find the key phrase to be “if you find”. If you find it, report it. If Google finds it, depends on who finds and what mood they are in. If they take the time to determine who originated it, no worries. But having proper links embedded will certainly help.

@Jeremy – Not many of the “rules” for Google are true EVERY time ;-D. Let’s hope the right site has the higher authority then.

@Sue – Because of the way they are coded, IDX listings are frequently not included in Google’s index. As such, not a concern when it comes to duplication. Those that are indexed probably are treated just like product listings from retail stores. This is one of the reasons you NEED to have your listings in other areas of your site besides the IDX. If you have questions, feel free to email me.

By: Sue Adler

Sue Adler — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:09:02 +0000

So if we should be worried about duplicate content, isnt idx indexing duplicate content?

Are you saying that the listing agent who writes original content on his/her site would be penalized for duplicate content if all of the random agents anywhere in that MLS have indexed idx on their sites?

By: Jack Leblond

Jack Leblond — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:22:46 +0000

Worried about duplicate content? http://bit.ly/18VB2e You should be.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:12:55 +0000

“Regardless of which site has the original content, when this is discovered by the search engines they will both be penalized.”

I have found this statement NOT to be true every time, more often than not, the site with the higher authority will outrank the lesser authority site.

*****
AG, nice to see you guys get your permalinks straight.

By: Greg Staker

Greg Staker — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:38:33 +0000

Here is a great resource from Google on duplicate content.

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

A couple of key statements from the Google page:

“If you find that another site is duplicating your content by scraping (misappropriating and republishing) it, it’s unlikely that this will negatively impact your site’s ranking in Google search results pages.”

“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.”

The key word from a Google standpoint appears to be “deceptive”. Are you dupicating content in order to manipulate the results.

By: Ken Brand

Ken Brand — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:49:53 +0000

I didn’t know Jack about Google ranking and stuff like this. Now I do. This is extremely helpful and appreciated. THANK YOU.

By: Joe Loomer

Joe Loomer — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:17:36 +0000

Thanks Jack, I’m making a few of these mistakes right now – soon to be corrected….

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