Duplicate content in search engines
There’re various opinions around how Google and other search engines deal with duplicate content. Google’s comments on the matter give an indication of how they deal with it, and the main takehome points are:
- They can usually spot unintentional (i.e non-malicious) duplicate content
- In the above case, Google will simply index the content it feels most relevant to the query that’s been typed in (so analysis/decision is done on a per-query basis), and will give users the option to see similar-looking results from that site – see below:
- In the case of webmasters trying to game search results by keyword/content-stuffing, they’ll spot that too – and will penalise accordingly.
This is good news and everything, but it does rather raise the question: How can Google tell if you’re malicious or not? And what if Google misunderstands your content and accidentally tags you as a spammer?
If you’re new to web copy writing content/management, duplication perhaps doesn’t sound like an issue…but from a search perspective, it can be. Why could you be penalised? How do you get round it? What are the options? Read on and find out…
