Duplicate content - Can google really mind that much?

What about song lyrics?

[Harley_m]

If you search for "sinatra my way" - in Google - you get 230,000 sites - ok not all of those will have lyrics to Frank sinatras Song "My way" - but a great many will - and all the content on these pages will be indentical...

why why why doesnt google go spastic at them if they really hate duplicate content as much as they make out?

Harley

[Brett_Tabke]

Dupe content filters have to be pretty sophisticated. One thing I think people generally misunderstand about them, is that they are used to ban a page or remove it from the index. With other search engines, that may be true, but not with Google. G just pushes down the page that is detected second. Additionally, there is so much going on with template detection and duplicate detection across many sites, that if they tighten the screws too tight, they risk degraded innocent or truely valued content with false positives. It's the same thing we run into trying to write good email spam filters.

The generic example search (pre approved) ;) in question, has quite a bit of unique content on those pages. Enough unique content that they should pass right by any dupe detectors. It is when you get down there into the 300+ results range that you run into many duplicate pages that clearly failed the dupe content detectors even across unique domains and templates.

I think the bottom line is that they are working as well as can be expected short of an army of reviewers running hand edits.

[Laurel]

wow! I love when your question is answered before you even ask it!

Thanks Harley and Brett