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I checked some of my competition listed in the top 10 and did find one site that scraped some text from me.
What percentage is considered duplicate content? What percentage would trip this filter and why would my site be the one considered the duplicate content?
So, while you can take care of the issue CAUSING the problem, taking care of the problem itself (dup penalty) does not have a solution, aside to wait until the next update, by which time, my site may hit the same issue again. Sigh.
I am also an innocent victim of the Google duplicate content filter.
My home page disappeared from the -fi data center last night when I searched for the top query that brings SE referrals to my site. My home page is returned in the 1st through 8th positions on the other eight data center serps. When I included the "&filer=0" query string in the -fi search, my home page was returned in the 7th position. I then searched -fi for an exact match of a unique keyword that I have on my home page and a listing that appeared to be my home page was returned as the only match but it has a URL for a page at a deferent domain. I went to the displayed URL and found a cached copy of my home page in a web directory that I have never before heard about.
The cached page on the directory site has the following text inserted:
(Note: This page is a text only capture of the url below - images have been stripped from it to make loading faster).
Cached page for [URL removed to comply with WebmasterWorld TOS]
I could not find a contact E-Mail address on the directory web site. I used their contact input form to submit notification of their copyright violation and direct them to remove my content from their cache.
Even if I am successful in getting the directory to remove my content from their cache, the Google duplicate content filter problem will continue. Google has already indexed 23,300 cached pages that are located on the directory web site. I think that Google should take immediate action to correct the problem created by their duplicate content filter.
Searched the web for keyword1 keyword2. Results 1 - 10 of about 2,390,000.
When I search for my unique keyword, the unauthorized cached copy on the directory site is still returned as the only match instead of my home page. I have to add the "&filter=0" query string to see my home page in the serps. It appears that the problem with the duplicate content filter has only been partially fixed.
When I am in and I type &filter=0, my site disappears and his site appears. The same occurs when he is in and I am out.
Let me note that my site is at least 1 1/2 years older than my competitor.
Anyone else see this? This filter is too sensitive. It would be very simple to drag someone into this predicament.
I'm on a Windows server, and I have some options (below) regarding the redirect, but none seem to work very well. Can anyone offer any insight?
1. Global.asa file - The problem with this solution is it only works for server side pages. You would not have to change the file extension from .htm to .asp but you would have to map the .htm/.html extension to run in IIS like an ASP page.
2. IIS 301 Redirect - I thought this would be the solution, however, it requires two IIS accounts or two accounts on the same server. What you would have to do is in your DNS record have domain.com going to one IP (account) and www.domain.com going to another ip. Both would physically point to the same directory on the server. Then in IIS you would redirect www.domain.com to domain.com
3. make the change at the DNS record. Right now the A record for www.domain.com and domain.com point to an IP address (11.222.333.444) . This IP address points to the IIS virtual directory that points to the physical directory.
Thanks for any help.
Anyways, I went into my htaccess file and redirected mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com. But then I discovered a huge problem: All my guestbooks were having problems, saying no text was entered, because the .pl file that processes the guestbook entries is pointed at mydomain.com and not www.mydomain.com, so the redirect messed this up. I can't simply change the .pl file because it is used for several different subdomains individually, which would mean I have to go into each one and change it...100's...not an option. Any other suggestions of getting google to see www.mydomain.com instead of mydomain.com?
Thanks for any help...also for any similarities you're seeing that might shed some light on this duplicate content filter behavior.
You could wait until the update finishes to see if it "fixes" although even if the other person removes the content, you may not see the difference until the next update. GoogleGuy mentioned they are still tweaking the algo for this filter, so you may be back when the update has settled.
If it isn't related to duplicate content, there could be a wide variety of other reasons why your site isn't coming up.
But for one of my main key-phrases I only appear when I add "&filter=0"!
When I search for a particular competitive Phrase "red widgets" my site lists at #11. All the first 10 results are different sites with no duplicate content. When I apply filter, my site ranks at 9, with 2 higher ranked sites now ranked at 10 and 15 resp. When Ideally, my site should have gone down in ranks after applying the filter, why is it ranked higher?
Thanx
Mc
There should be something wrong with Google, I'm sure my index page is unique, not copied and duplicated.
Still waiting for an answer from GoogleGuy about &filter=0
I want to learn what this filter does exactly?
Just laughing instead of crying :)
I know GoogleGuy would never answer or even he answers he would say some futuristic stories about 2020 and so.
Or maybe he would say about GoogleX, there is no search engine, there is no top ten listing, all is virtual! Take this blue pill and forget about everything or the red one for seeing ugly but real world :))
Offff!
Think about you're on a court and found guilty, but you don't know what you've done. This makes impossible to correct your fault and worse, you feel very discouraged to build new contents.
Anyway, I've put a lot of work on my site and I'll not give up before finding why!
Why Google filters a site? This is the main question and still hoping an explanation.
Queries without &filter=0...
Would return a serp with clustering turned on.
Queries with &filter=0...
Would return a serp with clustering turned off.
Why the change in ranking(sometimes drastically)?
Best described by example...
Query = widget
SiteA.com = 100 pages, all URL are titled ='Site A - Widget'
Yoursite.com = 1 page, title='yoursite - Widget', highly optimize
Query 'widget' with &filter=0
SiteA.com URLs would be spread through out this serp and ranking is based on a page per page basis thus it is highly possible that a single page Yoursite.com would come up at the top of the serp because it was optimized for 'Widget' assuming everything else are equal.
Query 'widget' without &filter=0 (clustering turned on)
SiteA.com URLs would be clustered at most to two URL. Rankings, in a manner of speaking, are now condensed for SiteA.com which would weigh a little bit more compared to your 1 page Yoursite.com even if it's optimize to 'Widget'.
Cheers
Simon.
That's me! Whatever I try I can't find any duplicates... and yes, I've tried everything suggested above.
Conclusion: There are no duplicates.
So why does it appear with the &filter=0, and not without it?
Yes.... at this juncture we certainly need input from GoogleGuy, because without that we can only speculate and guess.
Something else, other than duplicate, must be being applied. Either that, or there is a problem with the duplication filter.
It's looking like this could be the cause of a pretty hefty percentage of those missing index files. It's very widespread indeed.
What should we do to take GoogleGuy's attention here?
Great links (unsolicited) from all over the place, excellent unique content, squeaky clean.... and it gets nowhere on its main term.
I have spent the afternoon changing every other sentence on the front page. Great fun!
There's no logic to doing that... I can't find any duplicate anywhere... it's just that it was the only thing I COULD do!
I think there is a problem for Google lurking here. This site should rank well on any rational basis, as indeed it does with &filter=0.
The filter has netted this site, and no doubt thousands of other unique content and innocent sites as well.
I frankly have no idea where to go with this from here. Sit on my hands and hope they fix it.
Agreed. I have seen two sites suffering dup penalty with only 2 of their 5 main paragraphs copied word for word. And I will state again how wide open this leaves the door for sabatoge by competitors. Hopefully, they are realizing the potential and current issues and tweaking away.
Rae
Hopefully, they are realizing the potential and current issues and tweaking away.
I would like to give Google a PR0 for having nothing but duplicate content on their site. There is nothing original to be found and what they use of ours is an unpredictable hodge-podge that apparently is dependant on the latest recommendations of their marketing department. (Geez, isn't it great to see Amazon.com doing so well in the new serps).
By the way Google, my site has a www at the start of the URL. Sorry if that's too confusing for you.
