The topic of duplicate content is a highly debated one with my many bloggers. Well late last year, Google hosted its third Online Webmaster Chat and revealed among other things “Google Does Not Penalize Duplicate Contents“.

Now this ought to put an end to your questions, worries, fears and you now can start to use duplicate contents to your heart’s content. But is this new Google revelation as simple as it sounds? Why do I get this feeling it’s a start to more questions, anger, myths, uncertainties brought about by Google?

What is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content exists when you have more than one version of the same article or post on your site or you used the same article to submit to numerous article directories.

Google’s No Penalty - Truth, Lies, or Total BS?

Any Difference between a Google Penalty and Google Ban?

Some of us relate to a “Google Penalty” as something serious, like a Google Ban on your site. But there is actually a distinction between a Google Ban vs Google Penalty. A site which is penalized may not necessary be banned. It just means that this penalized site now does not rank for their own keywords. On the other hand if your site gets banned, that’s more serious as your site is no longer indexed by Google.

What some of my friends have said about Google’s “We don’t penalize duplicate contents” infamous statement.

1. “The respondent said, “…none of the search engines penalize duplicate content — they just ignore the duplicates,” which to me means the same thing, different words.We call it “penalize.” They call it “ignore.” The result is the same - no credit for “duplicate” content. (GT Bulmer)

2. You could have exact same copies of an article all over the net. Yes, maybe only one article will show up in a search. But… a different article (exact same version) could show up for a completely different searched keyword phrase.

Ignored? To a point. I guess it depends how you look at it. I honestly don’t take the time to create different versions of the same article. Too time consuming. I change my anchor text link in the resource box for a different keyword, that’s about it. If I don’t get credit for those backlinks… oh well. (Alan Mater)

3. I have another blog that I do absolutely nothing with and it is filled with duplicate content. Actually 90% of the post are duplicate content and in 3 months with almost no visitors it now has a PR of 1. That link I just posted might be the only backlink the blog has on the internet. If it was being ignored due to duplicate content it wouldn’t have any rank, but it does?

That leaves us with exactly what we started with, nothing. My belief is, no one knows how Google ticks not even Google employees.(Stephen Meyer)

4. Search Engine want to provide useful information to user, they don’t want to show the same result all on the top 10 list, this will not add value to the user.

- So they start to filter out “similar” content, and only 1 “similar” content will show.
- Which “similar” content to show with be decided by the back links of that page, so if your page rank and back links is high, even you have duplicate content, your page still shows!(KKChoon)

5.  Usually Google will index multiple versions of the same content however it will only rank one version, the site which has the most trust. So if you submit an article to a whole bunch of article directories including EzineArticles, it will usually be the one on EzineArticles which ranks well as it is the most trusted article directory.(Mike Law)

The most significant thing I did during this “We don’t penalize duplicate content” discussion

I started a new Wordpress blog and used articles that I submitted to EzineArticles. This blog is now PR1 after the last update just after 1 month. You could say they are duplicate contents but I could say it’s not entirely so since they are not found on the same site and I made it somewhat unique in some small ways. I made one significant change to rewrite the first and last paragraphs and have the post title changed. This new Wordpress blog is started solely for my link building strategy, not traffic building. Well I guess the real test would be to see if it goes to PR2 in the next PR update.

Can Original Content Beat Duplicate, Rehashed Content?

“Content is King”. So this is what we’ve been told, schooled from the day we decided to venture into an online business opportunity not too long ago. It’s also associated with writing unique and original contents on your work at home blog. To think that people are using rehashed or duplicate content on their blogs, that’s something quite unheard of in the early days of blogging. But this seems quite the usual practice now. It’s also pissing given people who only write original content something to think about….seriously like Garry Conn who said:

I write a lot of posts on my blog and I know for a fact that a lot of people read what I write. I see many other blogs who write (rehash) things that have been covered countless times over the last three and even four years and they get pretty decent reactions out of it.  What I write is pretty darn unique and original (at least I think so) but I never seem to get the reaction I desire. (Something is missing… what I don’t know).

Could this be a new way of finding success in blogging? Perhaps it’s the reason why I see many bloggers turning to using duplicate contents from an automated blogging software or plugin. Is this called blogging smart and not blogging hard. Is this going to be an accepted way of gaming the system. I’m not sure, what do you think?

Tell us what you’ve got to say about using Duplicate Contents on your Blog?

Tell us what you think about duplicate contents? Do you sense double talk by Google and just how much do you believe it. Do you make use of duplicate content in any way, for whatever reasons. Tell us by giving a comment here.

Over to you…..

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