Duplicate Content

duplicate content, multiple pages

[domingo]

Will search engines (mostly google) will treat the result pages of a search directory (free or PPC) as duplicate and penalize.

Looking forward for your expert advices.

[domokun]

not too sure what you mean,
are you asking what google will do if it finds you have two pages with identical content?
i think the consensus would be that it will simply ignore the later.
i think it would only penalize you if it thought you were trying to be sneaky ie. several pages with identical content

[jsnow]

I believe Google has quite a disliking of duplicate content and will penalize for it. It is something I have worried about as we have product pages with very similar content but have fortunately not had a problem with it

[shawn]

I have noticed more and more sites in my niche that have started duplicating the index page but optimizing for differnt states and cities (i.e. www.domain/city-keyword.html).

All the content is basicall the same but with different titles and meta tags.

In the SE's eyes do they consider it duplicate content? It certainly seems to be working for them.

Shawn

[Vec_One]

I agree with Shawn. I've seen many pages with a lot of identical content ranking well, side by side. This seems almost unavoidable, since many legit pages share a lot of identical content.

[shawn]

I have been wanting to do this for my site, however, I am hesitant to do so.

If anyone has any insight on how/what google calls "foul" on duplicate content that would be great.

[simonuk]

Heh, I just posted about this in another topic, should have linked to here :)

Google guidelines say (most other SE's are the same):

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

----------

Yes people are doing this and at the moment they are getting away with it. The question really should be can you afford to take the chance getting banned doing something that is against the guidelines.

One day SE's may take action and all your guideline-breaking competitors could disappear leaving you with a nice high ranking.

Simon.

[shawn]

with substantially duplicate content

Kinda broad and up to interrpertation.

[domingo]

I think I was unable to elaborate my question, let me put it again.

I have a PPC directory which contains PPC terms like

Category 1
----------
keyword 1.1
keyword 1.2
keyword 1.3
.
.
.
keyword 1.n

Category 2
----------
keyword 2.1
keyword 2.2
keyword 2.3
.
.
.
keyword 2.n

.
.
.
Category n

Now when a user/bot reaches my site, it sees links related to different categories. The user/bot decides to click on a link it will be taken to the result page where the results related to the term are displayed. These includes results from well-known ppc providers, banners, shopping networks etc.

The result page by which I mean Layout, remains the same for all terms, only the content, i.e the text, links appearing in it changes.

Does this mean Duplicate Content?

I hope this time I am more clear