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It has been pretty easy to use the same content to build a larger presence in the search engines. Just change the design and formatting of the site, then place the content somewhere on the page, and whamo, you have more than likely sneaked by the duplicate content filters. Well, that may soon change if it hasn't already. Have you ever searched for something on Google, only to see many sites in the results displaying almost the same snippets of descriptions? Google might just analyze those snippets right out of the query, run a few checks, and next time around those results may be filtered.
Although the present invention may be used with a number of different types of search engines, the present inventors anticipate that it will be used with an advanced search facility, such as the one presently available from Google, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. FIG. 8 is a process bubble diagram of such an advanced search facility 800 in which at least some aspects of the present invention may be used.
Diagram of figure 8 [patimg1.uspto.gov]
I think this would be a bonus for searchers. IMO, webmasters have little to benefit from getting the same content listed multiple times from the same search anyway.
The patent could be *used* as one more weapon fighting off competition by creating very similar sites and placing those slighlty above competitors.
The trick will be to determine what kind of information the snippet includes.
