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
-
Community Discussion - How do you create and distribute content?
Hi there, Moz Community! It's Thanksgiving here in the US, and this year I'm thankful for the release of Moz Content. 🙂 With that in mind, I'd like to revisit Kelsey Libert's November 5 Moz Blog post on creating and distributing content to kick of a community discussion to hold us over during this long weekend. Kelsey said: "Some content is designed to “go viral,” while other times a piece of content intended to stay among friends takes the Internet by storm. But whether planned or unplanned, rapidly-shared content has several commonalities. One of the key factors is that the content creates a strong emotional response in viewers." What do you think? How much effort do you put into getting your content distributed? Do you have particular strategies for creating your content? What are they?
Content Development | | MattRoney5 -
Reviving a (very) old blog - is it worth shifting the content onto a new blog?
I look after a few ecommerce sites, one of them doesn't currently have a blog, we are setting up a wordpress blog now for the site. Going way back in time the site did have a blog which was on a separate Typepad domain. What I'm wondering is whether it is worth redirecting this whole blog to the new blog section of the site and copying some of the content over to the new blog as historical posts? I don't think it will be possible to redirect each individual post to a new one so it will just be a straight redirect of the old blog domain to the new one with the same (most of anyway) content. Do you think it is worth doing this for the value of this content which is relevant but dated (many of the links are now expired)? Doing this will take some time to do so it's not 'free' content we'd be getting We have a lot of new content planned out so we won't be short of content, just would be nice to have some historical content on there too Thanks
Content Development | | PeterLeatherland0 -
What are the best widgets to use on Wordpress? And what is most useful on Wordpress for content syndication?
We are in the process of researching the best plugins and widgets for our clients' blogs. It appears that SEO by Yoast is most popular for 2013 so far. Any recommendations on which widgets we should be using or plugins for content syndication? If we use something like the Jetpack plugin, would this do the trick?
Content Development | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Content Marketing Strategy for a Solar Panel Shop
Hi everybody Everybody's talking about content marketing strategies these days and the videos from MozCon has definitely been a great inspiration for me. I have a customer who sells solar panels (wiki) here in Denmark and they are more or less hooked on the idea of investing long term. And this is where I wanna ask you guys for ideas to this strategy. I'm open to anything from overall guidelines to specific ideas on content. I hope you will chip in, thanks a lot 🙂
Content Development | | loevgaard0 -
Duplicate content problems, so why does WordPress post onto Tumblr?
Hi Everyone, Basically I know that if you have duplicate content your ranking is effected! This I understand, so why is it that WordPress has the option to post your blog entry straight onto your paired Tumblr account? Surely if this can be done, I can have the same content on the company website but also on WP and Tumblr? Or is there some sort of method to how it works specifically for those 2 websites? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | MariusFermi0 -
Forum Site: Content Value Post Panda
I run a forum website built on Wordpress. We're about two years old. The theme of the site is a directory of attorneys, with each directory listing having its own blog account on our site. Through this platform, we receive 75-80 blog posts now every month of varying quality from our users. QUESTION: A good number of the blogs published on our site are also published on the attorney's law firm site as well (they're syndicating on our site). Will this hurt our site in light of Panda? A lot of the syndicated content is very well written and insightful. By contrast, Will non-syndicated but average to below average posts hurt our site? The authors almost always link back to their firm site. Would love some feedback on whether we should be happy about the syndicated content or whether we should potentially ban it?
Content Development | | JSOC0 -
Article Distribution - Duplicate content or not?
Many SEO's disagree on this subject so I wanted to see what everyone thinks. Producing an article and then distributing to multiple article directories. In the eyes of Google is this considered spam(duplicate content) or it is not? As I understand unique content is good SEO. However, I also understand that visibility of the content on multiple sites is very important. What do youthink?
Content Development | | DmitryP0 -
Can un-unique content damage my rankings?
Hi there, I run a blog @ http://ablemagazine.co.uk We produce our own editorial content for our print magazine. Which means I have a great bank of uniquely written content. I can usually afford to post 1-2 completely 100% unique articles a day. I've also been copy/pasting 2-3 articles from the BBC or The Guardian a day to keep up activity. Should I continue doing what I'm doing? Should I post exclusively unique articles? Thanks
Content Development | | craven220