Duplicated Web Site

Can this cause problems?

[steve128]

Hi
I have read in various forums that duplicate copy can cause problems regards google spam alogos.
Anyhow a school seems to have decided my site should be used for a student project.

I'm not complaining, flattererd in fact, although a request to do so may have been considerate.
After the latest update backlinks are now showing to the site in google, or I would have never known!

They have about 50 pages so far, the thing is all text is copied word for word, although the page layout/s are different.
Can this cause paroblems? Should I ask them to use a noindex tag?

[Nick_W]

Can this cause paroblems? Should I ask them to use a noindex tag?

Yes
No, Tell them to exclude robots. School or not, they've stolen your content. If you're feeling kind then let them continue under the proviso they ban robots...

Nick

[steve128]

Thank you Nick, I will do

[Woz]

I would actually question the school why they are teaching their students to ignore copyright, why they are teaching their students that it is OK to steal another persona property. I think there is more at stake for the students from a moral point of view than anything they could learn technically from copying your site.

Onya
Woz

[drako]

Woz, I absolutely agree with you!

I can get very angry when people steel my content.
Do they have any idea how much time it costs me to produce this content?
I think it's very bad behaviour for a school to do this!

Steve128, don't let them get away with this... teach them!
They should have asked for your permission....

[steve128]

Thanks for the comments.
I would hope the school is not encouraging copy infringements; I would be more inclined to think a student/s saw my site as an interesting project assignment and used my content without the schools knowledge.
I have emailed the schools admin, and will let you know their reply, if it may be of interest to anyone.

[globay]

But what about content reselling? Lets say you sell
content that you have on your site to somebody that
uses the same text, word for word, on his site, of
course using a completely different site structure
and design.

I am not saying that you should ask the school to
get something, but how does Google notice the
difference?

Why are they destroying the new market of content
reselling?

[jomaxx]

They're not destroying content reselling. It's just that in the case where a given page is essentially duplicated many times across the Internet, Google sensibly chooses to only index it once.

[superkid]

So here is my question... and it may be a stupid one, I'm very new at this. I have read through much of the forums and through the FAQ and haven't found my answer. I have read that google can recognize if you have several domains with the same pages on them, all linking back to each other, and that this is a horrible technique to increase your ranking. But, what if all of the pages are slightly (or even drastically) different? Keep in mind that I am suggesting that all of these pages are on totally different domains, not just sub domains of each other.

I hope that this is not too elementary of a question, I am excited about being a part of this forum and learning all that I can.

-=SUPERKID=-

[ciml]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, superkid. There have been penalties based on the link structure between domains; I doubt that the content is taken into account.

If you're subject to human review then presumably anything can be taken into account. If Google don't like what they see, then they may decide that your site isn't right for their index.

Steve's problem is quite different, if the duplicate content has better links than his own, then his pages will vanish.