Duplicate Content Slap
January 18th, 2008 Posted by Chanya
I’d vowed NOT to write a post about the latest Google page rankings. Why? Because everyone and their cat has weighed in on this issue. The only reason I’m writing this now is because I believe I know why this site got a PR2 and perhaps my findings can help others. Okay, maybe no one else is as stupid as me and needs this blog tip, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.
Now you gotta understand that I started out with a PR N/A because the site is fairly new. I was hoping for a PR3 (baby steps) and honestly wasn’t upset with the PR2 rating, but I’m the type of person that tries to understand the logic of things.
Now, The Grizz says you should be able to get a PR3 if you follow the rules. I’m not a black hatter (mauve is more my color) so I was fairly certain G Corp. doesn’t consider this to be a spammy site. Nonetheless:
Let’s Go Through the Checklist:
| Paid Links? | NO |
| Link Stuffing from Other Sites? | NO |
| Keyword Stuffing in Articles? | NO |
| Links from Spammy Sites? | NO |
| Duplicate Content? | |
Last night I was looking at my older Blogger sites. Not because I was searching for duplicate content but because I wanted to check the age of those sites. My plan was to take one of those sites and make it into a niche blog if it was older than 1 year. Well, in addition to determining that my oldest sites were created 8 months ago I also discovered that two of those sites contained quite a bit of content identical to what I have on this site.
You see when I first started blogging (using Blogger) I would write a post and then publish it to one of my "test" sites to test the formatting. Once I was satisfied with the post I’d then publish it to my production site. I never went back and removed the post from the test site. I kept it there for backup purposes. I never knew this could cause a problem, noob that I was.
When I migrated from Blogger to Wordpress I totally forgot about the duplicate posts on the test sites. It was eye-opening to see how much duplicate content actually existed between this site and the test sites. I ended up deleting 8 identical articles and 4 articles that contained enough duplication to give me pause. Here’s an obvious blog tip: be sure to totally clean out your old stuff if you’re moving from one blogging platform to another. Now I’m not sure how much identical content it takes to affect your page rank but I’m betting that having 8 out of 56 articles that are identical (and 4 that are partial duplications) on two sites can’t help.
So, I’ve deleted all 12 articles and hope to do better the next time G Corp. hands out rankings.
By the way, check out this article on seomoz.org called Search Engine Ranking Factors V2. It contains a comprehensive list of items that 37 webmasters believe play a role in determining each site’s page ranking. Also, check out the article titled "The Illustrated Guide to Duplicate Content in the Search Engines." It’s an interesting read. But then again, what’s this - chopped liver?
Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 7:28 am and is filed under blog tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One way to check for duplicate content is to use Copyscape. If it passes that test you don’t have duplicate content.
As for the PR, I think Google’s algorithms are just randomly penalizing pages they assume are selling links or followed paid reviews. For example, OpTempo is PR0 although I’ve never sold any links and the 2 paid reviews I’ve done had ‘rel=nofollow’ in the links.
Frank: Thanks, I’ll give that a try. Did you write Google and ask for a reconsideration?
Hi Chanya,
I probably will at some point. I don’t consider it a priority though. What’s weird is that I have at least a couple of pages that are PR3 although my main page is PR0.
Hi Chanya,
Good post. Duplicate content can hold you back but with Google you never know - they may have penalized sites linking to you and you are lower because of the follow thru effect. I did a little snooping and ran a list of your backlinks - you have a lot which is good but relatively few high PR sites linking in. As your backlinks increase your PR will move up. Don’t worry over it though, keyword authority will move you up the serp’s in spite of the PR. As usual - good post Chanya.
Grizz: Wow, thanks for checking that for me, it explains a lot. I’m always so happy when you visit my site! Thanks so much for the info.
Also, congrats on your Page 1 ranking for the term “Make Money Online.” Here in North Carolina you’re #10 on page 1 but move up to #8 if I enter the term using quotes!
G is pretty stupid when it comes to spotting spammers and legitimate publishers. Yours is a good example that G’s algorithm isn’t as sophisticted as we want it to be.
Moshin: I agree. I’m eagerly awaiting the next update. Thanks for visiting!