Matt Cutts and Curated Content -- something is confusing here...
-
Okay, I read an interview somewhere this week where Matt Cutts said he didn't care much for curated content. Today I searched on that subject and came up with the following video of his:
So, in the video he is going along and saying not to just grab content and repost it. And then at around minute 3:15 he says that, on the other hand, you can have a blog like DaringFireball.net and that's a good thing, because the blogger takes the time to pick and choose what he is posting.
I went to Daring Fireball to take a look, and I saw that he writes maybe one line of commentary, and then pastes in a big chunk of the curated content along with a link to the source.
This shocked me. How could Matt like that blog -- he keeps telling that he likes original not duplicate, curated content. So, the difference is that a blog can get away with this if they exercise discretion in what they choose to copy and paste? How the hell would the Google algorithm know what the intention of the blogger is?
And here I've been wasting my time writing up paragraphs and paragraphs to precede any excerpts I paste in, in fear of getting hit by Google.
I'd like to hear your comments on this.
-
DaringFireball.net must have very low time on site numbers though. There's nothing to read on that blog, and links take the user away from the site. It's just a weird example that he chose.
-
@ Bizzer - I don't disagree with what you're saying. The issue is more complex and isolating one factor (even a major factor such as duplicate content issues) is often very difficult to do if you are comparing small sites with very large ones such as Mashable of HuffPo. Mr. Cutts has avoided answering whether non-analytics data about time on site is a ranking factor. I believe it is. Many other factors favor larger "high authority" sites. Even if you select better material and make more useful editorial comments about it (as evidenced by better time on site), G is going to favor the larger sites.
-
Yes, that's the difference, but how does Google know unless they takes the time to read each site?
In a blog of mine, I'm taking care to rewrite my own take on various stories that appear on other sites, only sometimes even pasting in an excerpt. I discriminate in my selections. So, instead, is Matt Cutts saying that I could just save a ton of time by just making a sentence of commentary and then paste in an excerpt? I guess so. (Yes, I know my blog is better for readers if I do it as I am now, that's not the issue).
Still, he's contradicting himself on duplicate content. And I still think it's hilarious (and confusing) that Cutts used DaringFireball as an example of how to curate. I'd at least think he should have pulled a site as an example that maybe writes a couple paragraphs, then some excerpt and then maybe a closing paragraph.
-
I think the difference is making a site that just regurgitates content nondiscriminatory vs one that has staff or editors that pick through the best of the content and then re-post it.
Yahoo repost Mashable stuff all day long, Huffington post built their world off or regurgitated content. Whats more is most news sites pull content from the Associated Press, each organization then decides what to tell its viewers about or spin to their political or company agendas.
In this sense a News Corp, or Website is actively discriminating at what they post and wish to tell its viewers about.
That's about the only thing I can make of it.
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
-
Duplicate content
Dear community, We have 15 product specific landing pages. They all share a block called "Why invest in VanEck ETFs?", see e.g., https://www.vaneck.com/de/en/mining-etf https://www.vaneck.com/de/en/space-etf/ https://www.vaneck.com/de/en/esports-etf/
Content Development | | marketing-europe
Can this lead to SEO penalization because of duplicate content?0 -
Any recommendations on a Content Marketing Firm?
I have used several and had some good results. Am wondering if I can find one that is more cost effective than who I am using now, as they just doubled their prices.
Content Development | | RoxBrock0 -
How to rank highly without much content?
Many pages on the web rank highly - even though they have no keyworded text. They might have listings, or just images. How do they achieve such high rankings? Is it just by getting lots of inbound links?
Content Development | | GayWelcome0 -
Knowledge base for seo, announcing new articles on blog (dupe content)
Hi all, Im thinking of creating a knowledge base with all many asked questions in my company. This could be a great Link-bait source but also nice ranking opportunities i think. But sometimes some new articles are so actual that i also want to blog them.
Content Development | | mdkay
Can i for example double post them (or post a big excerpt) on the blog and canonicalise it to the KB article?
Will links to the blog have equal value to KB links? And will this work?0 -
How can we dynamically populate content on our website based on a visitor's web history?
Recently, I have tried looking into options that would allow us to dynamically populate content (specifically images to be used at CTAs on our blog in wordpress) to different users based on their web history on our website. We would want to be able to dynamically populate images based on the number of visits in the past 60 days and the inferred industry based on pages hit. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find anything as a standalone tool - I believe HubSpot may have something like this but it is rolled into their blogging platform. Does anyone know of one?
Content Development | | SMPoulton0 -
Need creative content idea suggestion for travel business
Hi everyone It's glad for me to be a part of moz community. I'm really enjoyed. I would love to ask if anyone is creative content expert here can share some suggestions on how to produce high quality content for travel business. As the travel industry we are focusing on is selling tours in southern asia markets such as vietnam, laos & cambodia Currently i already come up with some ideas here Trip Interview Articles - with commissioned writers & paid bloggers Trip Experience/Report Articles - outsourcing to elance writers who have visited the destinations Any unique idea better than these which can set us apart from competitors and having high ROI on SEO? Thank you
Content Development | | dklongpro0 -
Ideas for content
Where do you get your ideas to create content for a blog? I have been using the new keyword planner and am not coming up with any ideas. We are an e-commerce site that deals with commercial equipment. It is hard for me to show anything interesting with products because the company does not own it.
Content Development | | EcommerceSite0 -
Duplicate Legal Content
Oftentimes lawyer websites will publish laws (codes, statutes, regulations, case law, etc). They add no value to the text, it's just copy pasted. Therefore, the same text/content may be on potentially hundreds of websites. Does google interpret this as duplicate content, or does it recognize government content as special? I want to have the laws on my website as well, however I am debating whether to add no follow tags or not. Or I'm thinking about adding value to the content by breaking down the specific law. However, even then at least 50% of the content on the page will still be the law, and I'm not sure if that is enough to be considered duplicate content.
Content Development | | irnikij0