Similar text question

[BMach]

I have read on this forum that it is a bad idea to use similar or the same text on different sites. I looked at many "top dog" sites that sell widgets made by manufacturers and these sites all have the exact same widget description text. The description text on these sites is about 500 words and makes up for about %75 of the text on the page. The description text is not just the same for one widget, but every widget for sale on the site. These sites are ranking very well and have been forever. The text might have been pulled from the actual manufacturers site and in that case this same text is all over the internet. So how are these sites getting away with this? Does google penalize for similar text or only if the entire page including text and html are the same? After looking at these sites I would think that Google only penalizes if the entire page is exactly the same not just the text. However, I have read on this forum that people have been penalized for just having similar text? I am confused...please help.

[MHes]

I think google will see duplicate content and will rank the highest pr site for that content. The other sites 'duplicate' content will be ignored. I suspect in your example the top site has the highest pr/best optimisation and the rest are ranking because of other text on their pages which are making them relevant.

I'm guessing though.

[hamster77]

I'm quite interested to see what's going to happen to the duplicate content on a client's site. I designed and built the small travel site with the copy and images supplied by the client. I had to do a fair bit of work on the images.

The client was very keen to get links (of course), so I was link-hunting today when I discovered that the client has uploaded a duplicate copy of the site to another domain... this is the same layout I set up for them exactly and using the images I put on the first site. The main difference is it doesn't have the backgrounds and other design bits and pieces - I guess they couldn't work out how to get them - and it's done on a template where they've forgotten to change some of the generic stuff, maybe Frontpage or something, I haven't investigated yet.

I'm really confused why they've done this. They said they were delighted with the site I designed for them and they paid up immediately. So what's the copy for?

Now some links point to one site and some to the other.

Maybe this is a really subtle ploy to make me work really hard on my version so I can beat the copy into obscurity... :)

This is going to be the first time I've had the chance to see what happens to duplicate sites this close up.

[BMach]

MHes, What you say makes sense but it doesn't seem to be the case. None of the sites that use the same text are ignored. They are actually all ranked high and next to each other in the serps. The text that they share basically makes up the content for the pages. The other text is just menu and copyright stuff. I am still confused about all of this? To me it doesn't make sense that google would have a problem with content being the same. There are many situations where this is necessary like in the example I described. Sites have to display content from the manufacturers and obviously it is going to be the same.

[BMach]

If for whatever reason google ignores pages with text that is the same (which I don't think this is the case), why would google ignore the page with less PR? This would be one of the easiest things to abuse. I could just steal text from sites with less PR and make it my own while allowing google to just ignore their pages. A better way of judging what pages will be ignored or not is to figure out which page's cache has had the text the longest. The first page with the text is most likely the owner of the text not the page with the highest PR. I don't know, this whole same text thing is getting on my nerves, does anyone have any hard evidence that google even checks for this?

[MHes]

BMach

I agree with you! Your theory on stealing text is correct and google must have thought of that. The age of the page is a good theory but must take a lot of resource, I think google would try and find a simplier solution. My theory still holds if there are no other sites remotely relevant for the search. Google will want to list the content in question once and then provide 'on theme' but different content before it starts listing the same again. I suppose if there are no any other sites reasonably on theme they end up stacking the duplicate content.

If there is no other content on these sites/pages listed and we assume it is being ignored, then anchor text links in and page titles may be a factor. However, I think you are right, the content must to some degree be indexed.

So what determines the ranking? A combination of pr and optimisation (title etc.)

Can you sticky me the results page?

[BMach]

Yes, checking every cached sentence would be quite a task! Maybe google checks for this somehow but I am going to take the paranoid route non the less. I need to use the same text that is already being used on other sites. Do you think that changing one word per sentence would be enough to steer clear of my paranoid delusions? In my opinion the google bot is not as smart as people think. But I still find myself being paranoid about everything!?

[BMach]

I have done some more testing to see if google ignores text that is used on multiple sites and to my surprise it looks like google does ignore text that is the same on lower pr sites. I did a search for "widget model #" and found a bunch of sites that all use the same item description. I then did a search for a unique part of the description and g only came up with one result from the page with the highest pr even though this string is being used on many sites. I will sticky the two search results to anyone who is interested in looking at these results. Or can I just post the searchs here?