Duplicate Content
Within Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), there are many rules and regulations that must be adhered to. Duplicate content and plagiarism are heavily frowned upon within SEO and search engines. If a search engine finds a website to have duplicate content, depending on the circumstances, it will ignore that content.
An example of duplicate content
Say for example, within a text, a line reads, ‘The weathered old fisherman sat on his boat with his fishing rod gripped in his gnarled hands. He had not caught a fish all day and was beginning to feel tired. But wait, is that a twitch on the line…. “At last”, thought the fisherman.’
If on another website, a text reads, ‘The weathered old fisherman was sat on his boat; his fishing rod was tightly gripped in his hands. He hadn’t caught a fish all day and was starting to feel tired. But wait, is that a twitch on the line…. “Finally”, the fisherman thought.’
This would be classed as duplicate content as text two is essentially an edited version of the first text. The second text includes re-worded, re-phrased and re-positioned text. And when a search engine spider crawls through this website, it will class it as duplicate and null it from the search.
Obviously, in order for there to be duplicate content, there needs to be at least two websites. A search engine will determine who it thinks has created the duplicate content by various factors. A search engine will take into account the credibility of the websites; so if there is a ‘PageRank 8′ website and a ‘PageRank 2′ website, obviously the search engine will believe the ‘PageRank 8′ one. The search engine will also take into account when the content was published, with the later content usually taking the brunt of the search engines punishment. However, if the search engine crawls through a website and finds one duplicate line in a 30 page document, it will put it down to coincidence. But if it finds a few ‘ coincidences’ it becomes suspicious and will take action if needed.
Duplicate content is a huge problem within the search engine optimisation industry, with huge costs being at stake. Search Engines are very stringent with how they find, evaluate and deal with duplicate content. In order to avoid such punishments, do not copy and paste from the internet!
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