Forum Moderators: open
Imagine page B with the same 6 tables and content, but the tables are rearranged into a sequence of something like 5,2,1,3,6,4
Font styles and colours are different, backgrounds are different and supporting text outside of the tables (maybe 10% of the page total) is different.
The pages are located in two different websites.
Within each table the content is the same... yet view the whole page top to bottom and the sequence of the content is very different. Any opions or first hand experience on whether Google would see this as duplicate content?
I have two fairly recent sites where this scenario applies, both spidered about every 2 or 3 days and both in the index. The first indexed site is doing nicely, the second site is a total non-event.
They are very similar in design and SEO and virtually the same inbound and outbound link arrangements. Every reason to think that if one does OK, then so should the other.
In trying to figure out what is going on, I'm wondering if these pages are seen to be duplicate content... but if so, would that impact on the whole site or just the pages?
One way to check is to pick a unique phrase from one of the pages that is duplicated on the second domain (and that wouldn't likely be found on another site. In the Google search box, throw some " " around your phrase, and see what the results are. Generally speaking, if both sites appear in the results, duplicate content is not the issue as to why your second site isn't performing as well as the first.
If only your first site comes up, at the bottom of the results you will see "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the X already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." Click the link, and see if both sites come up then. If so, Google is likely filtering you out for duplicate content.
Google's duplicate content filter has been going through significant algo changes the past couple of months - hard to say whether the entire site would be penalized for the duplicate content, or just the individual pages.
Of course, there are about a million other reasons why the second site is performing well. Are there quality backlinks into the site? Is the site otherwise following the webmaster guidelines set out by Google? Does the main page of the second site appear in the serps at all, even if they aren't competitive results?
