Dealing with duplicate content

more websites are duplicating their content and it is tough to compete

[earlpearl]

More and more I see smart aggressive webmasters generating duplicate sites/or virtual duplicates to try and attain multiple positions within various serps of the engines.

I don't see the engines doing anything about this.

In a variety of topics, including one I compete in, it is significantly effective to load up several sites representing the same business with virtual 75-95% duplicate content and different urls.

Within various categories it makes for effective marketing/marketing.

From the customer perspective in some cases it reinforces the business. In some cases it could turn off the customer...but I'll bet it works dramatically well with most prospective customers.

While the engines say this is inappropriate, they don't police this at all. I know I've reported it a variety of times with no response or impact.

I'm seeing it more and more

And my reaction finally is to do the same.

As a webmaster and business person I'm very familiar with the benefits. It appears the risks are a big fat 0.

I can't but think that the more webmasters that do this the more junk on the web.

But I believe its the engines' responsibility to enforce this...and to date I just don't see a response.

Just wondering what you see or experience in this realm.

Dave

[Ecaterina]

I spend a small fortune on copywriting, better say re-writing: the site I am working now is in cosmetics, so you can imagine so simple could be just to copy-paste. On the other hand, my friend had done a site after buying a database, then a little (dirty?) link campaign (better say guestbooks and blogs), then AddSense. It was some sort of experiment for duplicate-content/link farming, even so, in 2 years this little scam made more then $1000. Now multiply with 50 or 100 ... and think.

I do believe this is not a real, long-lasting sollution, and it is more and more to be avoided, but if you have cheap workers and like that scams...