Wikipedia content on your site - any penalties?

[dailypress]

Could you copy, paste Wikipedia content?
Would Google penalize you for duplicate content even though you have many good backlinks?

[edd1]

they'll penalise the pages with duplicate content. Yes. Or that's their goal. You might get away with it for a while but you won't sleep much waiting for the algorithm to catch up.

[tedster]

I don't think the word "penalty" is accurate here. You may well find that the URLs where you duplicate Wikipedia content get filtered out of search results for those terms, but that's not a penalty against your site. Your site's unique content will still be able to rank.

[edd1]

sorry, yes that's a better way of putting it.

There's nothing wrong with using open content. Google just doesn't see it as necessary to index it as it's already been indexed.

Thats the best way of looking at it, so in the ideal scenario a site with mixed content will still see the unique pages indexed.

[dailypress]

im just wondering how google can compare all these sites to each other!
how many comparisons is that?

2^ (millions of websites)

[tedster]

There have been several patents with various approaches. Here's our thread about a recently granted patent [webmasterworld.com]. That thread also contains links to more recent patent applications on duplicate detiection - not yet granted.

[SEOPTI]

There is no penalty for duplicated content:

Adam Lasnik:

"As I noted in the original post, penalties in the context of duplicate content are rare. Ignoring duplicate content or just picking a canonical version is MUCH more typical. This very, very rarely triggers a penalty. I can only recall seeing penalties when a site is perceived to be particularly "empty" + redundant; e.g., a reasonable person looking at it would cry "krikey! it's all basically the same junk on every page!"

[edited by: SEOPTI at 12:37 am (utc) on Oct. 31, 2007]

[nippi]

No PENALTY for duplicate content.... but yes,
you will be FILTERED for duplicate content.

different word
same result

or at least same same, but different.