Google and the Duplicate Content Myth

Google recently set up an official confirmation regarding the duplicate content penalty myth.  They have stated that there is no penalty for duplicate content.  However, they consider duplicate content to be a problem.

So what does this mean?  Well, you are not going to be shoved off the index grid just because you have duplicate content with a “never will you return because you have been banned” penalty.  Instead, duplicate content just creates issues for you that you don’t need.

Google will not ban or penalise you for a URL with the similar content.  Instead Google is set up to avoid one major issue.  Google and other search engines do not like to show a repetitious result.  So if there are two pages that have information on cat supplies they should not be duplicates.  For example:

Do you need cat supplies?  Well you have come to the right location...

If a page starts off this way and follows word for word one page is not going to be listed, while the other one may still be in the top rankings.  Typically one page just doesn’t get shown in other words.  Furthermore the search engine may not choose what you want shown.  For instance you have two URL’s with duplicate content.  One of the URL’s is old, but unused.  This URL could find its way into the rankings and the new site may not be considered important or be ranked.

Google looks for the “original” content page and will rank it over what it thinks is the duplicate.  This can mean bad things for you if you did not duplicate your work.  In other words, if someone stole content from your site and didn’t rework it they could be stealing your ranking.  There are ways to make sure this doesn’t happen, but the more common issue was mentioned above.

Most often someone decides to redesign their site for better SEO, which means they stop using one site and build another.  In this case you need to make sure you have the 301 redirect listed on the old site rather than the duplicate content displayed.  This means you are linking to the new site so that the Google bot can move to the new site where the proper content is now waiting to be indexed.  You have to help the machine because it is not human, therefore it cannot think.