If someone duplicates my content, can I be penalized for dup content?

[slobizman]

If I write up great content on my site, undoubtedly some others will copy it and paste it to their adsense sites. My question is concerning duplicate content. Does Google and the other search engines know that I was the original author somehow, by looking at the dates perhaps?

[stapel]

slobizman said: Does Google and the other search engines know that I was the original author somehow...?

Original authorship is sometimes difficult for informed humans to determine. I don't see how a mere search-engine spider could make that sort of distinction.

If you and a higher-ranked "authority" site both have the same content, then it seems a safe bet that the search-engine algorithm would include the other site, while yours would be demoted in some manner (being one of the sites "omitted" from a list of search results, being banned from the index, etc).

Just my opinion, of course; I could be wrong....

Eliz.

[netchicken1]

Might not the date first indexed in google be an indication to google which came first?