Duplicate Content Question

[joeychgo]

I have a widget site - mainly forums.

But I also have a How To section with articles on how to do this repair and that repair. Most of the articles are submitted by users.

Some of these are articles that have been used on several sites. I make minor wording changes, and its only the article, not the style of the page, thats duplicated.

Will google penalize me? or do they look at the site as a whole and realize I have maybe 10 dup pages out of 15,000?

[edited by: vitaplease at 3:28 pm (utc) on Oct. 4, 2004]
[edit reason] widgetised [/edit]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

This question keeps coming up. Duplicate content in this context is not a problem. If that were the case all sites that contained stuff like song lyrics would be getting penalised.

[sahuman]

Has anyone tried the copyscape tool? Is it a good indicator on where Google's duplicate content alarm could trigger?

[webdude]

Yeah, I've tried the tool. Sure it works for pointing out the similarities in readable text, but the question should be, what is the threshold that trips the dupe penalty?

Looking at just the text on a site will not do it, I think. Menues, JS, CSS, HTML, not to mention all the DB software and tags, all facets of the page should be looked at, not just the text. If it was just the text, all the news services who post AP clips would get penalized.

[Lokutus]

If it was just the text, all the news services who post AP clips would get penalized.

It would be easy for G to filter out the news sites and other which by definition will have dupesd material.

[caveman]

<hypothetical>

I'm a retailer. I am about to open a new chain of sporting goods stores. Among other things, I need to decide how many makes of footballs to sell.

I take every sales call; listen politely, then ask that they leave all samples behind.

After all the sales people are gone, I look at each and every ball: Size, weight, color, material used to make the skin (leather, faux leather, plastic), stiching style, lacing materials, bladder construction, pricing, etc.

Of the 73 makes and models presented to me by the manufacturers, I determine that just 17 are appealing, unique and/or best of their class, and well priced.

The rest I ignore, as being essentially duplications of the others.

Then I feature those 17 unduplicated, unique footballs in my store. I also offer different balls to different customers, depending upon exactly what language they use when they come in and describe the kind of football they are looking for.

</hypothetical>

Imagine that there were an algo to help me do this. ;-)

P.S. I'm not a retailer.

[Nuttakorn]

I think that if put the unique content on each page, you will get more value and higher ranking in both Google and Yahoo.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

... and then someone comes along with a scheme called Adballs, which blows the whole thing out of the water ;)

[dirty_marra]

copyscape tool

Where do I get this from?

Thanks

Marra

[webdude]

... and then someone comes along with a scheme called Adballs, which blows the whole thing out of the water ;)

:-DDDDDDDDDDD
Love It! I almost fell off my chair laughing. Good One!