Can Duplicate Content Be A GOOD Thing?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

Can having duplicate, non-original content on your site be a GOOD thing if it is of benefit to visitors to your site?

For example: A particular non-profit org has many articles they have written that they ENCOURAGE people to copy and paste on their own web sites.

These articles are related to many of the other articles on our site. These articles feature interviews with people who are deceased, so it is not like we could just go and write our own similar articles.

Without a doubt, the people who come to our site and read our own articles would also find the articles from the non-profit site helpful.

So, would it serve any benefit to copy these articles and meta noindex them so that they (hopefully) won't incur the wrath of Panda?

Is a meta noindex still considered a safe defense for duplicate content?

Also, will there be a problem if I have an indexable page that links almost exclusively to non-indexable articles?

Or is it best to just link to the original articles on the non-profit site from one page on OUR site (maybe with an original summary of the articles written by ourselves)?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[aristotle]

If you add noimdex tags to the pages, it should be okay with Google. To be fair, your should also give credit to the original source page by linking to it and by adding a canonical tag that references it.

[Planet13]

Hi ya, aristotle:

Thanks for the input.

To be fair, your should also give credit to the original source page by linking to it...

Yes, that is a requirement to re-publish them; that the copyright of the original publisher remains intact and I would probably add a link to them as well (although it is not specified to do so).

...and by adding a canonical tag that references it.

Hmmm... does this differ from a "regular" canonical link tag?

I guess if I am going to no-index the page it doesn't really matter to me where the canonical link tag points, but does it need to be different from a regular plain-old canonical tag?

Thanks in advance.

[tedster]

The syntax would be the same as any "regular" canonical link tag. But the fact that the canonical link itself is cross-domain does mean that only Google (currently) would make sense of it.

[aristotle]

Another thing I probably should have mentioned -- Even with the noindex tags, etc, it still might be best to keep the amount of copied content to a small percentage of the total content on the site. Also might be best to add these copied pages gradually.

[londrum]

i have got this exact problem on my site, and i still cant find a way around it.

i have an events site, which has snippets of info next to each event. and i let the user search for events by category, date, location and price.

so they might want to see events on the 1st february. so i've got a page for that. or they might want to search by category -- like theatre shows. so ive got a page for that. or maybe they want to see events at a particular music venue. so ive got a page for that.

all three of those are all perfectly useful pages. and people will search for those, so i dont want to noindex them either. but they will naturally duplicate a few of the snippets if an event appears on all three.

panda seems to be telling us to sacrifice two of those perfectly good pages, and just index one, because it cant work out that 3x duplicate content can sometimes be useful.

the thing that really bugs me about duplicate content is that the whole thing is built on a false premise. if something is original, that doesnt mean its good. it might even be rubbish -- because no one wants to copy it.
if content is repeated all over the web then that's probably because it's decent material. so why should a site be punished for carrying decent material?

[Planet13]

Another thing I probably should have mentioned -- Even with the noindex tags, etc, it still might be best to keep the amount of copied content to a small percentage of the total content on the site. Also might be best to add these copied pages gradually.

Thanks for the input.

I wonder if it might not be better to just summarize the pages and then link out to them on the original site (they are long interviews - and being JUST TEXT they are still over 200K in size).

I just hate sending visitors off site if I don't have to.

[mememax]

I agree with aristotle, I will try to avoid an high percentage of noindexed pages. A site with 80% of its content noindexed will be a low value one in google's opinion.

Taking londrum situation into account, why not create a page with all that information and then link to filtered pages?

For ex. you got a concert page. That page will contain date and location filters. Whenever a user click on filters, those filters will lead the user to noidexed pages.

the problem you got is that if Panda consider your pages as duplicates you may risk that your traffic will drop considerably, better lose some long tail kws to lost everything. You may consider create some content to add to location pages and so create those pages as days go by, but don't risk that google could point to your site as a duplicate one, you may lose plenty of traffic.