How does Google find the original author of content?

[scyzoryk]

I just recently started up a new widget site with self-written articles, and have submitted one of them to numerous free article websites for exposure.

My website is about a week old, still PR0, 2 incoming links, but has about 10/40 pages crawled.

So how does Google find out who the original author is when it comes to copying articles? How does it decide who gets dinged for duplicate content?

If a free-article website hosts my submitted article before Google has a chance to index it on my page, does that mean that I get dinged?

[stargeek]

its probably going to be based on the most linked to copy, or t5he highest ranked page.

I've written several articles that i've allowed to be reproduced with a byline linking to mysite and the original page stays at the top of the serps.

[oddsod]

>> how does Google find out who the original author is

It doesn't. Spend long enough browsing threads here and you'll see how many webmasters feel hard done by because stolen (or loaned) content can beat original content in SERPs, and often does.

Welcome to WW.

[BigDave]

Google doesn't care about which is the original, they just don't want to show thousands of copies of the same thing.

Use your free articles to get links, and don't worry about where they rank.

Use your other articles to try to rank in the SERPs.

If you happen to rank for your syndicated article, consider it a bonus.

[fourchette]

dave,

HI, If I understand well, one should not go out and publish all the articles of it's site in some article distribution service?

Would that cause troubles?

1- too much links inbound too fast?
2- duplicate content all over the place?

And also, if I understand your message well, you suggest to put certain articles online only, but would those articles be on subjects that you don't want to rank for anyway?

Also, would it be a good idea to say submit a short version of an article to the submission services (like half of it) and keep the full version on your site?

That way it seems you could avoid the dup penalty?

thanks

[Lorel]

I am constantly chasing down content thiefs for a client of mine.

I would recommend that you keep some articles for posting on the net (and do not post them on your own site or you may get penalized with duplicate content) and keep other articles just for your own website (no copying allowed).

For the articles you intend to post around the internet it is best to FIRST post it in a newsletter on a well known website in your market with a date stamp on it so if anyone copies the article you have 3rd party proof of who was the original author and when it was first published. After 1 year you can also use archive.org's way back machine as 3rd party proof. This has worked very well for removing stolen content off the internet for my client mentioned above and even getting websites taken down.

For the articles posted on your own website I would wait till Google caches the article and then make a copy of the cache with your browser (which has a date on it) then you have Google as 3rd party proof.

Of course you should also get them officially copyrighted, which you will need if you intend to pursue copy thiefs in court.

[fourchette]

Lorel:

Hey thanks for the advice about the copyright protections.

Is there any easy way to find those newsletter you mentionned? How do you contact a newsletter owner so it can include your article?

The other question was about posting on the free articles services only half of the original article, keeping the original article on the web site, would that be a sure way to not have duplicate content penalties, as people will be posting only half of what is really on your site?

Thanks