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If the same content on your site is produced elsewhere on the web, you'll be on a course of competition where even if you are the author, you'll risk a penalty if the search engines don't come to that conclusion. There is a balance to this - much material is reprinted in many forms, but the plain fact is that it's too dangerous to lend content to other sites and have the same content in substantial quantity yourselves. Dissenters exist, one such is cited at the bottom of this page - but is it worth the risk? Avoid duplicating material. The search engines won't try very hard to determine the authoring site, they'll just apply some broad and course rule (generally who has the highest PR currently) and give the content indexing to that site. Just change the material page - edit a few words to make it slightly different? They are much smarter than this now - both parties, the search engines and the people that staff them. There's NASA, then there's the search engines - they've hired the best people on the planet and paid them what they need to pay them - you can't outsmart them just by changing a few words - they have algorithms that work out significant similarity of material. It's a hot subject in the same genre as demoting the rank of sites that have been constructed just for the sake of adsense - so steer clear and avoid duplicate content across distinct sites. Duplicate Content within sites is not so bad - but still - original material is always best. Our search masters know that material has to be often repeated across different parts of the same sites - but if you have exactly the same page more than once on the same site - expect a penalty! Same content across canonical sites In this context we mean canonical in the sense of the same site names but different extensions, such as abc-widgets.com and abc-widgets.co.uk. In this case the duplicate content issue works slightly differently. At least for Google. Google have declared (through Matt Cutts - their face/interface to the world of webmasters) that they recognise the need for some replicated material across distinct sites where the sites are canonical. This doesn't mean that pages can just be the same exact pages, but merely that replicated material across distinct canonical sites will not be met with a Google penalty. These sites may well be eCommerce sites that operate across different Geographical catchments where the same product or service is sold. The sites show better for .co.uk in the UK, .ca for Canada, .de for Germany, etc. This scenario therefore is not seen as duplicate content that get's hit with a baseball bat in the rankings - downwards that is. However, beware, because other search engine wannabees don't quite have the sophistication of Google and may still penalise the apparent duplicate content - to be on the safe side - make it at least a little different. The Special Case with PHPSessID If you are using cookies and a visitor comes to the page with cookies off and the host has the PHP ini file set such that it appends a session Id onto the URL, the search engines will index pages with that session Id as part of the URL. Next time the bot comes along, a different session Id is appended, and a different URL is generated and indexed with exactly the same content. This only happens so many times until the bots determine a case of duplicate content. Once it starts it's difficult to fix, but better to prevent it starting by ensuring that in this special case, the URL is fully qualified - i.e. that the link is defined in such a way as to not have a relative link with just the page name, but to have the complete URL path, e.g href http://www.thesitename.com/thedir/thepagename.htm. If the problem has already occured, then to fix it takes some time but is essential. RagePank Disable PHPSessID has a good section on getting the problem fixed. We've gone through the steps with a site afflicted with the problem, and it actually works! Think about your site content carefully. Don't get material from other sites or from article sites. Be careful with material replicated across your own site or canonical sites - pages should never be exactly the same even in this situation. Duplicate content is Google's public enemy number one - avoiding it is avoiding an obvious search engine penalty. Further Reading: Duplicate Content - A Dissenter | Duplicate Content Penalty | ||||
 Search Engine Optimisation -- Turner Dow -- There's Only One High Street Now SEO House - 9 Silverdale - Wembdon - Somerset - TA6 7PT Tel.01278 426100 - Email: info@turnerdow.com |
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Avoid All Duplicate Content