Duplicate Content Not An Everyday Problem
If you’re responsible for a handful of blogs or sites, and have been wearing holes in a thesaurus to avoid using the same phrase twice, rest easy. At SMX Advanced, Matt Cutts said some things about duplicate content that should comfort the average blogger or small business owner. Coverage of SMX Advanced continues at WebProNews Videos . Stay with WebProNews for more updates and videos from the event this week. Cutts was asked whether a network of co-branded job sites would be penalized for duplicate listings. He answered, "Within one site, I wouldn’t worry as much about a duplicate content penalty. We’ll just try to pick the best page." Also, even when scores of sites are involved, the odds are good that there’s no need to worry. Cutts continued, "If you have the same content on 200 different sites . . . is it typical that we give a duplicate content penalty for that? No. Definitely not." For the sake of not giving an incomplete picture, though, we should note (as Cutts did) that Google remains focused on users having a positive experience, and it might be best in the 200-site situation to make PageRank flow to one original domain. Not bad, right? So again, as long as you’re not doing anything too unusual, don’t worry about leaving your thesaurus or Word’s trusty Shift-F7 combo alone for a while.
Matt Cutts Opens Up About Google Penalties
Not long ago, another installment of the wacky car race known as the LeMons was held. Rule-breakers are penalized by being forced to do things like paint Bob Ross landscapes on their hoods and participate in conga lines. Google’s punishment system isn’t quite as obvious, though, so Matt Cutts discussed the matter at SMX Advanced. Coverage of SMX Advanced continues at WebProNews Videos . Stay with WebProNews for more updates and videos from the event this week. Cutts started by giving a rather witty answer to the question of “how can you tell if your site is in the penalty box?” He replied, “One really good way is if it disappears completely from Google. That’s what we call a leading indicator.” After some laughter subsided, Cutts then shared additional details. He said, “We make the penalties public where we think it can give the most help. So if you’re a small mom and pop, and you didn’t even realize (this happens a lot) – I hired a webmaster, and he put some hidden text on the page in 2003, and it was like 3 sentences, and they didn’t know – that’s the sort of thing where you want to tell them [through official channels]. “But if you see a sustained drop in ranks, or if it drops completely out, that’s the sort of thing where . . . there’s lots of forums on the web, including the Google Webmaster Forum, where you can go and ask for some help.” Cutts noted that Google’s employees will often respond with some “very, very blatant hints” about what’s gone wrong on such forums. And here’s one more important detail: unlike the LeMons judges, Google isn’t trying to toy with anyone. Cutts said that the only reason all of this isn’t conducted out in the open is because scammers and black hats would use the info to their advantage.