Google De Stresses Duplicate Content Issues

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Google continues to open up and pour out their heart – it wont be long and the only secret left in the cupboard is their algorithms. The one tasty morsel that every search engine optimization expert would love to get their fingers on. Back to duplicate content.

On Monday this week the Google team wrote several posts relating to duplicate content. The bottom line, there is little in the way of duplicate content penalties – Google prefer to use a filter system to deliver the most appropriate version to searchers. To quote from Adam Lasnik on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog:

In the rare cases in which we perceive that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. However, we prefer to focus on filtering rather than ranking adjustments … so in the vast majority of cases, the worst thing that’ll befall webmasters is to see the “less desired” version of a page shown in our index.

For webmasters and search engine optimization consultants, that is good news. The post goes on to add some very helpful advice as to how you can present your site in such a way that the best ‘version’ of the content is indexed and presented in search results. The last tip really does set the scene for duplicate content:

Don’t worry be happy: Don’t fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though annoying, it’s highly unlikely that such sites can negatively impact your site’s presence in Google. If you do spot a case that’s particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and have us deal with the rogue site.

So when it comes to duplicate content, protect your own site with a few noindex or nofollow’s and you should be fine. Scrapers will have their content undervalued. I still like my number one anti scraper tip – include an internal link on all your content. It helps the search engines identify you as the authoring site. Search engine optimization gets easier with every Google info release.