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May 27, 2008
Duplicate Content Vs. Syndication Continued
By Scott Goodyear
A bit more on the duplicate content vs. syndication idea...
I found a recent post on the popular Wolf Howl SEO blog where he gives his own take on how Google may be getting their duplicate content filters wrong. Wrong or right, he has a point. Not all original content creators will rank highly for their own content.
Search engines can place great value in domain authority and other factors. This means that a site that originally published some piece of content may not rank as well as another site that republishes that same content. This is true even if that same content is re-published quite some time later. While this could all change tomorrow, I'll give you a pretty straight forward example from our own MarketPosition site...
A local SEO shop called Anvil Media allows us to repost their articles from time to time. Perform a search on the phrase: Building Trust Online to Build Sales. As of today, you'll find a page from Market Position ranking in first place for that phrase. With Kent's permission we re-posted the Building Trust Online to Build Sales article in August 2006.
In the same search results you will find a link to a post at SEMpdx where Kent re-published this article in April 2007. (SEMpdx is Kent Lewis' Portland Oregon SEO community site.)
Looking back through the Internet Archive, this article was originally on Anvil Media's site around April 2006. It is possible that Kent may have even published this piece elsewhere or previous to this, on a different Anvil Media URL.
Putting this a different way... Google does not necessarily rank the original publisher in the top spot:
While I've read a few theories including those that Google -can- use the original date of publication as one factor in determining whether a page is actually duplicate or not, and then filter out the duplicates (this way the dupes may not rank as highly as the original publication...) obviously this doesn't always happen. But these are good ideas and theories on how Google works in relation to duplicate pages, and may generally apply as one of several overall factors that they balance when making an algorithmic decision in how to rank original and duplicate pages.
Syndication can be a good thing if you are able to get your content
onto a site that is popular, that has some trust, age, etc. On the other hand, this also means that for an indeterminate amount of time those other sites may out rank your pages for your content. It is a mixed blessing to be sure.
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