Duplicate Content Penalty

Hows it work?

[Livenomadic]

I have long believed in the duplicate content penalty, that is: When the majority of the content on two seperate webpages (on different sites) is the same, the one with the higher PR will be shown and the other one will not.

However, last week for university I was required to read "The Roots of Muslim Rage" by Bernard Lewis, originally published in 1990.

Here is my Google search for "The Roots of Muslim Rage" [google.com]

As becomes plainly obvious with the results, on the first page of results, 8 of 10 pages are displaying the ariticle, and ALL have atleast some PR:

Listing 1: PageRank 6 (Possible Authority Site)
Listing 2: PageRank 4 (Possible Authority Site)
Listing 3: PageRank 4 (Not Authority Site)
Listing 4: PageRank 3 (Not Authority Site)
Listing 5: PageRank 3 (Not Authority Site)
Listing 6: <Not the Article>
Listing 7: PageRank 1 (Not Authority Site)
Listing 8: PageRank 2 (Not Authority Site)
Listing 9: PageRank 3 (Possible Authority Site)
Listing 10: <Not the Article>

More interesting still, the first listing (Atlantic Monthly) is where the article was originally published. And the 9th listing acutally links to the first listing.

Therefore, google ISN'T penalizing these pages for showing the same content.

Comments? Explainations? Other Examples? Lets see if we can get to the bottom of this!

[Brett_Tabke]

The page found first wins. PR has *nothing* to do with dupe content.

[Custodian]

Brett,
Does this mean you are agreeing with the statement that there is no duplicate page penalty?

I've been trying to figure this one out too.

[Brett_Tabke]

no. I am saying that the 2nd page found will get the downgrade.

[Livenomadic]

Interesting, only a "downgrade"?

So many webmasters here talk about dupconpen (my word) as something that wipes your site back to PR 0.

Not sayings they or you are right..

[Custodian]

If "PR has *nothing* to do with dupe content." then how does a site get penalized for duplicate content?
Thanks for your input.

[Custodian]

Maybe I'm missing something here. Isn't a lower PR a downgrade?

[Custodian]

I went back through several of the past threads on this subject and it seems that as long as the pages are not exactly the same -- same links, navigations, title headers, footers etc, having duplicate content is not a big issue.

I am gathering that Google and the other search engines have a tough time scrutinizing down to the paragraph and sentence levels.

If I am wrong, someone please point me in the right direction.

[Livenomadic]

I'm interested in this too.

1. Since I have been thinking about using Wikipedia parts in my articles.

2. Since I have been thinking of syndicating my articles (Not RSS, just regular) on other sites.

[3Mice]

Hi,
You might want read this:-

[webmasterworld.com...]

I posted something similar to your question and got interesting replies

[karmov]

Maybe I'm missing something here. Isn't a lower PR a downgrade?

Yes, a lower PR would be a downgrade, but there are over a hundred other factors that affect your position in the SERPs. If any one of them gets downgraded, your position in the SERPs could drop. PR is only a single factor amongst many. PR is not the only measure to go by.

[Custodian]

3Mice - Thanks for the link.

No definate conclusions, but yet another area where there are lots of varied experiences.

[prairie]

I don't think the "first page in wins" situation is ideal, let alone fair.

Surely a page with on-topic inbound links would tend to be the best source of information.

Older pages would naturally tend to have more links either internally from a growing site or from outside sources.

What is the real-life experience?