Google Duplicate Content Filter

When it comes to content, it is imperative that the material you put on your website is original. There are some exceptions to this rule though and I will touch upon those in a minute. First on the menu is the ever popular Google duplicate content filter. Ah yes, the one and only filter to watch out for, or is it? Let’s have a looky shall we?

So what is duplicate content anyways? Is it simply one sentence that has been copied or is there a lot more involved? What happens to a site that participates in duplicate postings? These are common questions that I see all the time and it’s important to sort them out. As you very well know, Google works hard to be the best at what it does. You might think that entails providing the best advertising program, or the largest list of sites in their database. Neither of these is correct. They focus on the user’s experience.

Google does not have the largest index of websites, a company called Cuil does (last time I checked). Does Google provide the best advertising experience? That is personal opinion. What they do well though, is provide relevant information (most of the time), to a user’s search on their engine. After all, if the only sites that came up on searches were lousy pieces of poo, then who would want to use their engine again? Quality = repeat visitors.

So that brings us to the duplicate content filter. This is sort of bittersweet. When it comes to content and duplication, it tends to be a first come, first serve basis. That means the first website to be spidered and crawled, will receive the trophy for that piece of information. Don’t let that fool you though. You may have a great article and another website could steal it from you. If their site is viewed as an authority, then they may even take the credit instead of your “small” site. This doesn’t happen very often though so it’s nothing to worry about.

I also would not panic yourself with phrases and sentences being 100% unique on every page you have. There is a high probability that somewhere on the internet, someone else has used the same phrase in an article somewhere. There is no way that 12+ billion pages will not have some words repeating and Google knows this. It’s taken into account when looking at a website. So what is the end result?

If you just focus on providing your users with an enjoyable experience, and do not copy/paste the same article 400 times on your site (figure of speech), you will be okay. There is no need to panic when writing content. Simply do your job, keep your site updated (once a week minimum) and work on other avenues of your business. All parts of a website will have some duplicate content such as a menu bar, navigation, footer bar, and the list goes on. Don’t worry about those things. Focus on the big picture and don’t get caught up in “dupe” land.