MSN Flags Duplicate Content, Watch Out!

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 2 of December , 2007 at 4:49 pm

Live Search - aka MSN Search - has been showing some of the most aggressive duplicate content filtering I’ve ever seen across any search engine of late.

If this is true, it could have some far-reaching consequences for webmasters and SEOs. While Google doesn’t necessarily follow MSN, nor does Yahoo!, often times you will find the three big search engines being affected by the same, or similar policies. This is no doubt an algorithmic change for MSN. If so, it may need tweaking. Nevertheless, until then, be on the lookout for declining SERP results, especially if you have articles and press releases floating around that are also on your own website.

It’s not a given, of course. But if MSN is flagging press releases and other information normally found in various places as duplicate content then you’ll want to alter one or both of your sources of information in some way. In other words, rewrite that press release so that it doesn’t appear on your website exactly as it does in the distribution sites that you visit. It’s just a precaution, not a fix-all.

                      Category: Content Development