Does Duplicate Content Actually "Penalize" a Domain?
-
Hi all,
Some co-workers and myself were in a conversation this afternoon regarding if duplicate content actually causes a penalty on your domain.
Reference:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en
Both sources from Google do not say "duplicate content causes a penalty." However, they do allude to spammy content negatively affecting a website.
Why it came up:
We originally were talking about syndicated content (same content across multiple domains; ex: "5 explanations of bad breath") for the purpose of social media sharing. Imagine if dentists across the nation had access to this piece of content (5 explanations of bad breath) simply for engagement with their audience. They would use this to post on social media & to talk about in the office. But they would not want to rank for that piece of duplicated content. This type of duplicated content would be valuable to dentists in different cities that need engagement with their audience or simply need the content.
This is all hypothetical but serious at the same time. I would love some feedback & sourced information / case studies.
Is duplicated content actually penalized or will that piece of content just not rank? (feel free to reference that example article as a real world example).
**When I say penalized, I mean "the domain is given a negative penalty for showing up in SERPS" - therefore, the website would not rank for "dentists in san francisco, ca". That is my definition of penalty (feel free to correct if you disagree).
Thanks all & look forward to a fun, resourceful conversation on duplicate content for the other purposes outside of SEO.
Cole
-
This is a very interesting topic and as always we have no proof of the consequences from Google. I was always under the impression that should a page be seen as a replica of another page then the older page would rank higher in the SERPS. I was also under the impression that should duplicate content be discovered by Google that page would be flagged and penalized? I'm subject to correction because, as I said, there is no definitive proof relating to this at all.
-
One of the sites we acquired syndicated content to other parties (when we bought them last year, we changed the policy, so all syndicated content now has a canonical url pointing to the original article). Some of these sites were better positioned for our content, but apart from that, we didn't see any penalties for doing this. If these small business owners don't need to rank for the content and they get if for free, it should be easy to ask for them to put the canonical. In our case, discussion with these sites was sometimes difficult as we were paid for providing the content.
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for your feedback.
In this "scenario," we were focusing on "small business owners" that were dentists. They don't want to rank for that piece of content; they only want the engagement benefit or the consistency benefit. Instead of a small business owner struggling to post content or write original content (and no budget to hire someone), they would use "duplicate content" on their domain.
From your feedback, it appears there would be no penalty. I didn't even think about just copying & pasting duplicate content from competitors.
Good points.
Cole
-
I don't think you get penalised for syndicating content like this (it would be too easy - you just take the most interesting pieces of content from your competitor, post it on some anonymous domains and wait for his ranking to drop).
The main problem is that you loose control over which site is ranking for the content. Suppose one of the dentists in your case would be quite famous, because he's appearing quite a lot on television, or he treats famous stars and blogs about it on his site. By doing so, his site is quite popular, and get's a lot links from well known sites. In that case, it would be possible that his site is outranking the original site for this article.
For this reason, canonical url's were "invented" - so you can continue to syndicate content, without running the risk that this syndicated content is going to outrank the original site.
rgds,
Dirk
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Posting same content multiple blogs or multiple website - 2018
Submitting same content on multiple site or blog using original source Links. Its good or bad in term on Ranking and SEO. Can we post same content on multiple website with orginal post reference same like Press release site technique.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Canonical cross domain Linkjuice
I know that back few years ago, rel=canonical used on cross-domain was passing link juice. As I've read based on many experts (case studies), the canonical cross-domain was working like implementing a 301. Is it still the case ? Does anyone tried to implement it recently and it worked ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | manoman880 -
Duplicate content warning: Same page but different urls???
Hi guys i have a friend of mine who has a site i noticed once tested with moz that there are 80 duplicate content warnings, for instance Page 1 is http://yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html the warning page is http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/signing-documents.html another example Page 1 http://www.yourdigitalfile.com/ same second page http://yourdigitalfile.com i noticed that the whole website is like the nealry every page has another version in a different url?, any ideas why they dev would do this, also the pages that have received the warnings are not redirected to the newer pages you can go to either one??? thanks very much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ydf0 -
301 redirects for 3 top level domains using WP SEO Yoast
Hey Guys I have a custom built website - and a wp blog attached to this - problem is there are 3 top level domains: zenory.co.nz, zenory.com and zenory.com.au **The issue is when I enter the domain to 301 redirect I only have to enter one domain usually i enter redirect from zenory.com/blog/oldpage to zenory.com.newpage ** For eg: I have just move Phone Psychic Readings from the blog - over to the main site. However there seems to be an issue that I'm still having and trying to clean up. I'm finding backlinks there are linking to each other of my 3 domains that end up backlinking across domains, which I was told this can look as spammy to google. For eg: co.nz links many pages to com.au. I'm currently trying to clean this up at the moment - however while im in the process of this - I find myself question when I'm creating the 301 redirects from the blog - but lets say I'm on the blog for zenoy.co.nz/blog/oldblogpost and when I click on a blog post - it redirects me to zenory.com/newarticlepost - because I have redirected it to .com - how can I redirect and make sure is going back to the right domain name to save myself from having to show this cross backlinks? Would gratefully appreciate any assistance on this tricky situation. Cheers Just
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Have just submitted Disavow file to Google: Shall I wait until after they have removed bad links to start new content lead SEO campaign?
Hi guys, I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically. I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool. The question I had was.. Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet.. Look forward to your replies on this...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
Redirect n domain to one
What happen when I redirect301 10 domain to one? I have 10 domain with ave Page Authority=45 and Domain Authority 60 and want to increase my new domain by redirect them. is it right or wrong?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vahidafshari450 -
Can a "Trusted Retailer" badge scheme affect us in the SERPs?
Hi Guys, In the last week our website saw a drop on some of our biggest and best converting keywords and we think it might be down to us rolling out a “Trusted Retailer” badge scheme. We sell our products directly to consumers via our website, but we also sell our products to other online resellers. We think badges are a good to show the consumer that we trust a site. On the 17th September we sent out badges to about 39 of our best retailers, two of whom have already put them on their sites. Instead of sending them a flat jpeg, we sent them HTML files containing code that pulled in the image from our servers. We wanted to host the image to make sure that we always had some leverage. So if a company stopped selling our products, or the quality of their site went down, we could just remove the badge. Whilst at it, we stuck a link in there pointing to an FAQ on our website all about trusted retailers and what people need to look out for. We chose the anchor text “(brand name) Trusted Retailer”, because that seemed to be the most relevant. The code looks like this: (our brand) Trusted Retailer You might notice that there is a div just before the link. This is there to stop the user from clicking on the top 65% of the badge (because this contains the shop name and ID number), and we also used a negative text-indent to move the anchor text out of the way. But right underneath this is our Logo, so it’s almost a hidden link, but you can still click it. So far the badge has been put in on two sites, one of which isn’t so great and maybe looks a tiny bit spammy. (They sell mostly through ebay as opposed to on their main site). Also, these sites seem to have put it on most of their pages! So my questions are; Is this seen as black or grey hat? Is it the fact we put in anchor text with our brand? Or is it the fact the url is transparent in the coding? Or is it the fact the sites are using sitewide links? In any case would Google react so quickly as to penalise us in two days? If this is the issue, do you think there’s anything we can do to stop getting penalised? (Other than having to e-mail 39 retailers back and getting them to take the badges down). Thoughts much appreciated – we do our SEO in-house and are still learning every day… Thank you James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | OptiBacUK0 -
How Google deal with a Domain Buy
Hello folks, How is google dealing with those clever peoples who decide to buy a famous place on internet( domain ), to be their domain name. For example if someone buy a very well ranked domain name for some keywords in their niche, is there any punishment? Whats the bad things about buy a domain? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | augustos0