Does Google penalise for duplication?

Snowgoat · Jul 15, 2010

We list a holiday rental property on a commercial listing site. This site has recently made an agreement with several dozen subsidiary sites to list their properties, so our listings appear on many of these sites (different countries worldwide).

I was concerned that our listing would be penalised by Google, and got this reply from the original listing site: Our properties are data fed and linked back to our own site. Any white-label websites which we produce are hidden from the Search Engines.

Fair enough.

However, we use Google Alerts to keep us in touch with where the listings appear (and to keep an eye on our competitors). These duplicated sites are now being picked up by Google.

Should we be concerned about penalisation? We're not in a position to change the text on each listing as we only have control of the original listing that we submitted.

OldWelshGuy · Jul 15, 2010

not really, as the duplicate content penalty refers to your own site only, not across the web.

There can be issues if you have identical content across the web, but it is a filtering issue, not a penalty, i.e. your pages might not show in a SERP due to them being filtered out at the point of search. But it is not a penalty.

Ali-v-8 · Jul 15, 2010

Do you know Graham that is the best explanation for duplicate content I have heard in a long time.

OldWelshGuy said:
not really, as the duplicate content penalty refers to your own site only, not across the web.

There can be issues if you have identical content across the web, but it is a filtering issue, not a penalty, i.e. your pages might not show in a SERP due to them being filtered out at the point of search. But it is not a penalty.

seo next · Jul 21, 2010

OldWelshGuy said:
not really, as the duplicate content penalty refers to your own site only, not across the web.

There can be issues if you have identical content across the web, but it is a filtering issue, not a penalty, i.e. your pages might not show in a SERP due to them being filtered out at the point of search. But it is not a penalty.

Interesting ... How do you differentiate between being "Filtered out" and being Penalised ?
I think both of these are more of less similar ?

Jul 21, 2010

digiwebsol said:
Interesting ... How do you differentiate between being "Filtered out" and being Penalised ?
I think both of these are more of less similar ?

No a penalty can result in the whole site being demoted in the SERP's

Duplication just means you may have pages that do not appear in the index.

Earl

OldWelshGuy · Jul 21, 2010

digiwebsol said:
Interesting ... How do you differentiate between being "Filtered out" and being Penalised ?
I think both of these are more of less similar ?

You are not being penalised, the duplicate pages are simply being filtered out for that particular search so to answer the question

penalty is across the board and is always time based

filter is search term based and is simply part of the algorithm to prevent thousandsof identical pages being returned for a search term.

There are criteria for the filtering, but I don't want to post them on an open forum really as this was used for black hat reasons to take competitors out of the SERP's. It is one of the 'almost nothings' that Google refer to when they stated 'there is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your rankings.'

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449

estwig · Jul 21, 2010

digiwebsol said:
Interesting ... How do you differentiate between being "Filtered out" and being Penalised ?
I think both of these are more of less similar ?

I'll take this one gentlemen, step aside now!!

Filtered out: If you search for widgets, why would google want to return 10 pages of the same thing?? Why would it do that?? who would it benefit??

So google filters out the last 9 results and returns the first one it found.

It's not a penalty, it's bl**dy obvious!

Jul 21, 2010

estwig said:
So google filters out the last 9 results and returns the first one it found.

Oh no it don't mister Punch.

Earl

estwig · Jul 21, 2010

sirearl said:
Oh no it don't mister Punch.

Earl

Don't quote me outta text Grandad, your a bad old duffer!!

Jul 22, 2010

estwig said:
Don't quote me outta text Grandad, your a bad old duffer!!

From google webmaster,seems you can get what amounts to a penalty .

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.

If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.??????

In the rare cases in which Google perceives 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. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

Earl

seo next · Jul 22, 2010

sirearl said:
From google webmaster,seems you can get what amounts to a penalty .

we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

Earl

So now we have reached the conclusion that it can be *termed* as a penalty ...?

Ali-v-8 · Jul 22, 2010

Like i said (or OWG said) he got it correctly defined in one small paragraph.

However Earl pointed out how you can get done over by google. By repeating the same content into one website to bulk it up. And having the same stuff on page after page will become a big negative.

OldWelshGuy · Jul 22, 2010

digiwebsol said:
So now we have reached the conclusion that it can be *termed* as a penalty ...?

NO! read what Google have said, they are backing up what i have said previously, that being

as the duplicate content penalty refers to your own site only, not across the web

What I said and what Earl has posted is referring to your OWN SITE. i.e. if you repeat duplicate content across your OWN pages multiple times, you CAN get a penalty for trying to manipulate the rankings (spamming).

What you were asking about was the same content across multiple websites, which of course is a completely different scenario

crossdaz · Jul 22, 2010

Everyday Currys create a datfeed of all their product range for affiliates to use on external sites- as do most other big retailers.
As a result the product descriptions are duplicated on thousands of sites across the web. In many cases this is the manufacturer's product description so is repeated for most other retailers who stock the product.

You can connect directly to amazon and display product data and reviews for everything on their sites across the globe which is an exact copy of what they have on their own site.

Do you think these businesses and all the affiliate sites get penalised by google?

End of story

Ali-v-8 · Jul 23, 2010

No, They just wont get the benefit of having the content.

crossdaz said:
Everyday Currys create a datfeed of all their product range for affiliates to use on external sites- as do most other big retailers.
As a result the product descriptions are duplicated on thousands of sites across the web. In many cases this is the manufacturer's product description so is repeated for most other retailers who stock the product.

You can connect directly to amazon and display product data and reviews for everything on their sites across the globe which is an exact copy of what they have on their own site.

Do you think these businesses and all the affiliate sites get penalised by google?

End of story

babrees · Jul 23, 2010

as the duplicate content penalty refers to your own site only, not across the web

hmm. On some of my sites that are running on WP I have some posts that are in more than one category, simply because they apply to more than one subject.

I thought that the canonical covered that, am I wrong and would I be penalised? Should I put them in one category only and just put extra tags on them?

TIA
Jill

OldWelshGuy · Jul 23, 2010

if you are using the canonical tag to make sure Google are aware, then not an issue. The best SEO WP plugins have always ensured the duplicate issue is dealt with.

Ali-v-8 · Jul 23, 2010

Forum Posts, blog post are dealt with by the son, father, grandfather algo. Which means the time dictates which post is cached. hence no penalty.

crossdaz · Jul 23, 2010

babrees said:
hmm. On some of my sites that are running on WP I have some posts that are in more than one category, simply because they apply to more than one subject.

I thought that the canonical covered that, am I wrong and would I be penalised? Should I put them in one category only and just put extra tags on them?

TIA
Jill

Google knows how wordpress works

The Panda · Jul 23, 2010

Ummm, very interesting stuff.
One question along these lines I have never really had answered is this.
If I had exactly the same site but on lots of different urls, what are the repercussions of this both to the original site and all the other domains.

Ali-v-8 · Jul 23, 2010

1) the first launched website would have all the benefit.
2) if launched at the same time they will be in limbo.
3) it would be classed as spam.
4) there is absolutely no benefit from doing this so why would you.

Classic scenario. A client gets told to buy loads of URL for each term he wants to represent. He uses his templated website on all the urls. His page one position for "private investigators london" disappears.

He wants us to repair it.
I wont touch it because, he did it behind my back and the work involved repairing a situation is much more that just doing a job on a website.

The Panda said:
Ummm, very interesting stuff.
One question along these lines I have never really had answered is this.
If I had exactly the same site but on lots of different urls, what are the repercussions of this both to the original site and all the other domains.

The Panda · Jul 23, 2010

Thanks for that explanation Ali-v-8.
That is a similar scenario that I was going to do but have the main site then several gateways with just one page that will take you to my main site but all the gateways would look the same as my home page but be optimised for all the local towns around me.
It made sense to me early on but now I know more about it then maybe not.
I bought up all the URLs around me that containd my product plus town.
I have kept them for 2 years now and dont intend to sell them as they stop my competition for using them.

OldWelshGuy · Jul 23, 2010

There is one HUGE caveat here, and it is PageRank. It is PR that is the deciding factor WRT mirrored content.

Ali-v-8 · Jul 23, 2010

If you are trying to cover areas then consider hosting sub domains on other servers.
They are classed as seperate URL from your website so all links are great too.

The Panda said:
Thanks for that explanation Ali-v-8.
That is a similar scenario that I was going to do but have the main site then several gateways with just one page that will take you to my main site but all the gateways would look the same as my home page but be optimised for all the local towns around me.
It made sense to me early on but now I know more about it then maybe not.
I bought up all the URLs around me that containd my product plus town.
I have kept them for 2 years now and dont intend to sell them as they stop my competition for using them.

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Does Google penalise for duplication?

Snowgoat

OldWelshGuy

Ali-v-8

seo next

OldWelshGuy

estwig

estwig

seo next

Ali-v-8

OldWelshGuy

crossdaz

Ali-v-8

babrees

OldWelshGuy

Ali-v-8

crossdaz

The Panda

Ali-v-8

The Panda

OldWelshGuy

Ali-v-8

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