Is it time to block syndicated content ?

[Whitey]

John Mu at Google says to a webmaster that lost their rankings :

I would recommend going through your website and making sure that all of your content is as unique and compelling as possible. Changing a few words here and there isn't really what users expect, so I would recommend either providing unique content of your own or blocking pages that re-use content from other sources from getting indexed.

[google.com...]

Is syndicated content now worthless to the point it can dinge your site ? Seems so.

Any thoughts ?

[tedster]

I'd say the key information in John Mueller's post is in this sentence that he wrote to that particular websmaster: "it seems that almost everything is found on multiple sources as well as on your site."

A few syndicated pages will not hurt your rankings, IMO. A website with nothing but copied content should not rank, and it sounds like this basic principle just caught up with that webmaster.

[fishfinger]

A website with nothing but copied content should not rank

... except for answers.com, of course :)

[tangor]

The old adage "content is king" remains. Copy as little as possible. Create unique content and go from there. A bit more work, but then again, if it was easy everyone would (rank high)...