Google Duplicate Content Penalties Revisited

By Miles Evans

A few Google updates ago one of my review websites went from top placement in Google and friends to 50th over night. Yahoo, MSN and the rest were unchanged. As it turns out one of the test domains I own was pointing to the server with the review site and tripping up Google's duplicate content filter. A year of hard work SEO'ing seemed flushed down the toilet. Now the problem has since corrected itself but I have never achieved that top ranking on Google again from this rookie mistake.

TIP: In apache the first container you make in httpd.conf will be the default website shown. For that reason I now make this initial entry a 'COMING SOON' type of page with links to some of my other projects.

Google's duplicate content filter is one of the most speculated and pondered about black hole's in SEO discussion today. One of the biggest anomalies is why the other big search boys do not employ similar tactics. Does Google have it wrong?

Yesterday as I was plowing through the days feeds I came across a really interesting experiment conducted by Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy at SEOChat that looked into this further. Here is a blurb:

"Initially, there were 14 sites that featured the article, including my own. Within a few weeks, that number grew to approximately 19,000 or so sites, which also contained my website, which was the actual origin of the content. Then after about 5 or 6 weeks, the number of sites featuring the article fell to 46 sites. What's aggravating is that my site, which was the source of the original content, was not included anywhere in the search results for this article title."

So the content filter works by eliminating from its rankings content which it deems is not original. But as Jennifer and SEO'ers across the web point out is this is clearly not always an accurate process. In fact if you are submitting articles on a regular basis and testing your results, you must have noticed this by now. Often if your article is plagerized not only are you penalized for dupe content but the perpetrator is rewarded with a steller ranking. Your ranking! Sadly if you are the original writer of stolen copy and Google decides otherwise, there isn't a whole lot you can do. Any by a whole lot I mean nothing.

So as it stands in 2006 tripping up Google’s duplicate content filter is a guaranteed way to kill your rankings - but for how long? For me it took 7 months to get back on the top page of Google at position number #9. A helluva long tumble from #1 for my very competitive keywords. Many domains never recover.

So how do you avoid this happening to you aside from always writing your own content? The bad news is you can't. The good news is that it is no secret Google works very closely with copyscape.com, the same people who handle their Google Alerts service.

From my research Copyscape seems to trigger when strings of 8-10 words are being repeated. It seems amazing but the service is actually performing a dupe check 'net wide'. Judging from its results, it would appear that the search is not being conducted or calculated in real time but rather may be cached during Google's sandboxing, or once every 1-2 months. The bottom line is that if you suspect a dupe is killing your rankings, and searching for your string of text receives no results on Google AND Copyscape, you can likely rule it out as a cause.

In closing I guess the obvious question is how can Google tackle a problem like plagerism effectively with billions of indexed pages. With so much stock cash at thier disposal you would think they would look at human editors (see the Google Peoplerank Memo Leak) being deployed when duplicate content is detected. I mean if they can throw dollars at insuring their top results pages are not affiliate spam, surely they can do the same against article bandits...

Until then one has to hope that a solution is 'in the lab'

Miles Evans provides indepth reviews on every SEO/marketing or killer app he can get his paws on. His reviews, essays, and tools on SEO, OLM, reporting, and other equally fascinating subjects are normally carried out at ProfitPapers.com - Stop by and check out my free backlinks page.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Miles_Evans

SEO 1,2,3 for Dummies

By Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin

Seo is Search Engine Optimization. A magician's bag of tricks to get your web page on high SERP (Search Engine Rank Placement ) and High PR (Page Rank). SERP is when you search on Google for a keyword (word you are studying) like cats, you get a page of twenty web sites on cats back out of a hundred or thousand pages. SEO is the art of getting your web page to be listed for as many keywords pertaining to your site on the first page of hundreds. Since people have short attention spans, they tend not to search ten pages of returns to find your page.

That is the short skinny on the subject. If that answered enough quit reading. Still curious? Below is a more in depth but only basic description. It still is a basic description even if it lacks MTV brevity.

To get high SERP you can bid on keywords, through Google and other search engines you can bid on certain keywords. Every time someone clicks on my add in blue at the top and sides of Google pages (These are the auction listings, I will pay anywhere from .5 to $5 every time someone clicks on my site for the keywords I bid on. The one who bids the most gets to be on the first page for cats. The rest of Google is suppose to be based on scholarly research qualifications).

So you need to find a keyword that people actually look for but not too many people are bidding on. You got to niche your keyword. To find appropriate keywords you check your web logs to see what words people used in search engines to bring you to your site. Also their are online tools to use that suggest keywords and give a thesaurus of options along with how many times people searched for that keyword last month.

Then we get Page Rank which is based on how many people link to you. The higher page rank used to me higher SERP. But search engines update and change to keep ahead of SEO people. Google's Jager update screwed me up. The Higher PR the higher you can charge someone to advertise on your page also. 10 is the highest. Now to get links you want people to link to you in the middle of a paragraph near the top of their page with reference to you desired keyword. By the way have you seen the updates to my Life Coaching site (http://www.docspond.org , but since html is outlawed in this article I display it this way without conventional a href tags)? This would be a better link, Natural linking, instead of a directory of 200 people to a page called mile high links. Natural linking is someone considering you more an expert than just linking by subject as in Mile High. Sometimes the first ten can get points from robots to get high SERP on mile highs but these pages in general start out with lower wealth. So sites charge you a premium to be listed on a home page or the top of a directory. But you will never get anyone to click on these links, the only importance you get from them is robots.

Robots are programs that scour the web following all the links on your page to each other and all the ones you list to other sites. They check to see you have good code and list your words for their directory so people can find any phrase you placed on your site. Now links to other sites within three pages of your home page toward the top of each page get better points than any deep in your site or toward the bottom of the page. Also they down score links if their is too many on a page.

To get your site index by robots you go to search engines and go to the bottom of the page and find a link called submit your URL. there you put your address in and hit return. Anywhere from 3 weeks to four months it could take a robot to find you for the first time. Then it will index you once a month unless in your pages code in meta tags you tell it to visit every day if you like. Also it is good to submit URL on search engines every time you change your home page. More times you change your home page the better for points.

Some engines charge you to be listed. But in time they will index you because people on their engine have links to your site that their robots will follow to you. Then you are indexed for free. Yahoo charges to be listed in their business directory some think like $300 a year.

Now to get links is a tedious process of sending out hundreds of emails with a friendly greeting, Your site title with appropriate keyword placement in it, and site description. For their listing you, you give them a reciprocal link with their title and description on your link page. You can get people to link to you as an expert through natural linking. You can do the same for them. But if you get a link without giving one, it equals you higher points. Which in turn give you higher SERP. Other way to get natural links is to create something buzz worthy or give free tools. If you have a cool video of someone winning a Darwin Award, some one might say " Check this Dumb Fuck out!" and link to your site. If it is a popular page you get more points for the link. or if you have a free tool like these; Whois (I can find out your IP address from you computer from my web log and see which state and country you come from and your Internet provider to bitch too), Keyword finder , or Favicon creators (Little icons that appear at the top of the browser to the left of the URL).

Last but not least are RSS, Blogs, Newsletters, and Article submission. RSS is real Simple Syndication. It is a poor mans AP wire service. People have attachments to their browsers called aggregators that read this peculiar code. It can also have placement on your web page. Say you can have a feed from the latest news updated daily by the New York Times which helps keep fresh content on your site to get points. Or you can have people list your articles on their site giving you links back to your site. Then we have Blogs. If you blog you will put a link back to your other page. When this gets higher PR so does your other site. Also it is something else to attract clients to you in another arena. Also every time you comment on a board or blog, make sure you link back to your site in your signature. All post tend to be indexed by robots. If they find your link they come back to your page and give you points. Then newsletters you create will do the same. Links from emails count too. If you click on the links above, you will give points to that web site. But mostly newsletters are marketing to gather sales and inform the public on your product. Then we have article submission. By submitting articles to directories, they get published by other web sites and provide links back to your site.

That is the basic of SEO. Image the expert article. Hmmm...

Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin is propietor of Docspond Life Coach Services providing Individual Counseling, Group facilitation, and key note addresses that speak to the heart of the mission while delivering the bottom line finacial growth. Helping millions find their bliss and return meaning to success! Guaranteed 20% improvement in your quality of life after the first meeting!

Also is the propietor and designer at Norgeforge Illumination Studios that will SEO illuminated design giving Aesthetics to traffic driven sales.So get out of the cold and get Norgeforged!

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