There is NO Google Duplicate Content Penalty
There still seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about Google’s “duplicate content penalty”; so much so that I felt the need to help clear the confusion.
For Internet Marketers there are a lot of good reasons to have duplicate, or mostly duplicate, content.
There are articles to publish at the social media and content sharing sites in support of a specific marketing campaign.
There are sales and squeeze pages that are targeted to different audiences.
There are even content in different languages.
But there is this fear of Google penalizing you for duplicate content, maybe even going so far as removing your Web pages from their search results.
Simply, that is untrue.
Why do I say that?
Because that Google specifically says in their guidelines and their blog that there is no “penalty” for duplicate content and understand there are many legitimate reasons to have duplicate content.
What they say they do is try to provide a good selection of results to the people who do searches.
What that means is that if you have a lot of duplicate content then it won’t show all of them but pick what it thinks is the “right” one and show it along with other results that are different.
The best way to see this is when you see that Google message saying that similar results and asking you if you want to see them.
If you click that link you will see the duplicate content.
That proves Google doesn’t remove the pages from their results but it does filter them for the benefit of their customers on a specific search; it may filter differently for different searches.
Although it might seem to be a penalty to you because after all your hard work hardly anyone sees the duplicate pages.
Google does admit that spammers use duplicate content and they will remove pages that think are just trying to manipulate their search results ranking but ethical marketers wouldn’t be doing that so those situations shouldn’t arise for you.
Why You Don’t Want Duplicate Content?
While it seems easy to create one article and publish 100 different places to get nice links and improve your results, if most of the pages don’t show up then you aren’t getting as much value as you could be.
Second, if you are using multiple domains you are diluting your “link juice”, that is your link popularity.
After all, 100 links to one web page is generally better than 10 links to 10 web pages.
Also, Google give you a limited amount of “time” when they come and index your site or blog, if the duplicate content is on the same Web site then you will be wasting your valuable indexing time, indexing basically the same pages which will mean that other pages, deeper pages, won’t get indexed.
What Can You Do?
There are really two primary problems: filtering and loss of link popularity (this second one is a penalty but it is self-imposed).
Make Content Different
To stop the filtering you need to make the content “different”.
It is generally believed that if you make the content only 70% the same then your page won’t be filtered.
I aim for only 50-60% the same, who wants to be ordinary!
Keep Your Link Juice Pure
To stop the loss of your link juice you can’t do too much for content on multiple domains, but for those on the same domain you can do one of 2 things.
- Create a 301 Permanent Redirect which basically says “I’ve moved, I ain’t coming back and here is my new, forwarding address”
- Use the rel=”canonical” link tag attribute which tells search engines (the major ones support and honor this tag) that they should consider this page to be the same as another “real” page (you tell them what other page) and to always show the “real” page in the search results. The tag looks like:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”NameOfRealPage.html”>
What that means is, say you have a Web page named “DuplicateContentMyth.html” and you also have another page “DuplicateContentMythPrintFriendly.html”.
On the “DuplicateContentMythPrintFriendly.html” page you have the HTML code:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”DuplicateContentMyth.html”>
Then the search engines won’t let DuplicateContentMythPrintFriendly.html steal the link popularity of DuplicateContentMyth.html and you get consistency in what pages people see when they click you search results.
As a side benefit you are telling the search engines which page is the page to display instead of letting their computer program decide, possibly incorrectly.
Here is a short video from one of Google’s software engineers verifying that there is no penalty.
Conclusion
Google does not penalize duplicate content in the sense that you lose their love and they remove you pages or ban you.
They do filter, by search query, the results they show so that their customers get a variety of results. To marketers this feels like a penalty but from Google’s standpoint it is understandable – they want to make money just like everyone else!
Duplicate content can also hurt you because you are diluting the link popularity of any particular Web page (remember the 100 links to one page is better than 10 links to 10 pages example).
There are actually many good reasons why you might want that dilution but it should be a conscious, planned decision that will benefit you more in other ways.
To overcome the 2 problems:
- Modify the duplicate content at least 30%
- Tell the search engines what the “real” primary page is for the content
Do you think I’m full of it and that you’ve been penalized?
Do you understand now?
Leave me a comment and let me know.
Talk soon,
The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdwords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com
O.Y. If you want to read more, just go to Google’s duplicate content guidelines.
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