Google addresses duplicate content issues
Yesterday on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Sven Naumann posted an article covering the issue of duplicate content. Duplicate content, especially content scrapers, is a major concern for webmasters as many fear they will be penalized by Google. The main issue that is covered in the blog post is the fact that content can be scraped off a website and posted elsewhere with out a websites knowledge. The valid concern therefore becomes being penalized for something you have no control over.
The blog post covers two major areas when it comes to duplicate content: duplicate content appearing in more than one place on your website and your content appearing on a different website (most of the time without a content owners knowledge). Google’s intent is to assure website owners that their technology allows for the differentiation of content sources and determines where the true source of the content is. Google is also nice enough to provide information on how to address both of the above scenarios.
The main point of the blog post, at least from an SEO standpoint, can be summoned up with this paragraph: “To conclude, I’d like to point out that in the majority of cases, having duplicate content does not have negative effects on your site’s presence in the Google index. It simply gets filtered out.”
Obviously there are a lot of other issues when dealing with duplicate content, especially when it comes to “Black-Hat SEO” tactics, however this should be used a starting point resource for any webmaster.
Read the full Google Webmaster Central blog post here.
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