Who says you can't rank duplicate content?
June 26, 2008
On May 23rd I wrote a blog post that should have completely destroyed the myth that you can't rank duplicate content. You can.
My new blog post sharing site, ShareAPost.com has proven that duplicate content ranks well. The entire site is made up of 100% duplicate content: snippets of other people's blog posts that users can republish on their own blogs.
Just in case anyone still has any doubts about whether Google will send traffic to pages made up of duplicate content, here is the ShareAPost.com search engine traffic from May 19th to June 26th:
May
June
Almost 2,400 visitors from a variety of search engines (mostly Google) in just over one month's time — all generated from duplicate content. Syndication has been a standard in offline and online publishing for many years. There's no reason Google should ignore content just because it's been syndicated. As the above numbers show, Google does not ignore it at all!
As I've said before, I strongly advise going to ShareAPost.com and finding some quality posts to republish on your own blogs. Some of that Google love could be going to your syndicated pages, too.
Also, see my previous post on the subject for a cool trick to turn duplicate content into "unique" pages in Google's eyes.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
Comments
72 Responses to “Who says you can't rank duplicate content?”
Got something to say?
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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I wonder if it matters that ShareAPost.com is a content site much like an Article Directory. I know that Ezine Articles, GoArticles and other Article directories score very high on Page Rank and SEO position. But, they are directories whereas other sites like mine are not. Is there any evidence that duplicated content is bad for non directory sites?
Interesting results. I haven't done any of the case study type analysis but most people can see the same sort of things just search for different syndicated news stories, any headline that the AP puts out there will be on lots of sites and at least one of them is going to get a lot of traffic for it.
Awesome post Jon! I have wondered about that for quite awhile. Glad you have the "Proof in the Pudding".
Regards!
Buddy
Great news Jonathan, I'm going to sign up for ShareAPost right now.
Hey All,
I have been using share a post since it started on 3 of my blogs. 2 are online business related and 1 is home improvement. As an experiment I decided to only post from share a post to either confirm or refute what Jon has been sharing about duplicate content. I am pleased to say that I think Jon is actually down playing the reality that google will rank shared (duplicate) content. Bottom line. Every single share a post article I have posted is currently listed on google and receiving the same attention as my completely unique articles. Not only that but the articles that were posted on my blogs to begin with have now been reposted over 30 times on other quality blogs with text links intact. Talk about a win win situation. I am not trying to sell anyone on share a sale I am only telling it like it is.
Share a Post Rocks
Your Online Business Buddy
Gilbert
Well done!!
It just shows we got it all wrong regarding duplicate content… Obviously Google ranks your site well enough to give Authority to the content… meaning we must rather concentrate on getting links than worrying too much about duplicate content.
Gerrit
Jonathan,
I love the service. Thing o beauty!
Thanks!
Justin
I've known this for quite sometime, based on my own trials and tribulations. I have actually reposted my own content on various sites (hubpages, squidoo, weebly, etc). only to find each article individually ranked for a keyword. Sometimes ranking 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…….
One Question Jonathan…does it matter how fast you post duplicate content? If you do it all in one day, does that count against you vs. spreading it over a week?
Once I figured that out I haven't stopped doing it. I'll have to check out ShareApost. Thanks!
Nice to see someone bring this to light. I have a bunch of sites built with unmodified PLR that rank really well. You just out link the competition that has the same duplicate content. Although i have found that over time google eventually does de rank some but not all of it.
Jon,
Share a post has been one of the best finds since I've started in internet marketing.
Having quality content at your fingertips and knowing others can do the same is just a no lose proposition.
Thanks for the quality info as always.
Jeff
I'm not fully convinced that those stats are search traffic. Looking at my awstats for one of my sites shows that your screenshot is missing an important measurement, which is # of searches from each of the search engines.
i using share a post duplicate content uh
Thank
I have been reading your post on dupe content and the report that you wrote on this subject a while back. I know over and over you show that dupe content get attention, but I still wonder. It always seems to come up over and over again, even though you seem to prove that it does not matter. The more I read from you the more I am thinking that you are correct. I am going to look at your new site and see what it is all about.
Tim
content is KING, duplicated or not. its all about links and the anchored text. My site is 100% duplicate content and i just got a clients site ranked #1 in Google in less than 72hrs of registering their domain all with duplicated content and its still ranks #2 some six weeks later.
Jonathan Leger knows his stuff. trust him and be grateful for his advice.
Well it's bout time someone stood uP for what the actual facts are.
Just hours ago, I got an piece of spam where the whole entire message was built on duplicate content and google ranking…a total load.
I'm using shareapost on 3 blogs with good results, and plan to continue to do so on each blog.
What I need to know is which link from this comment gets the better link luv…the one above or the one below…anybody???
gourmet coffee snob
Always Drink Better Coffee
Hi Jon
Thanks for info, its good to know when your short of time to write a new post. You will have a back plan when on holiday or away for a
week or two or when you just need a rest. Nice to have peace of mind knowing its been tested .
Cheers Paul
Thanks Jonathan!
You know? I been thinking how to resolve this problem what are you talking about, but now i received something new and I'm going to apply right now.
As always you impressed me.
Good Job!
That is interesting find. I was always scared from duplicate contents. Looks I should not be that much.
Thank you the friend already send the email to me, I was also startled how come bs tau the address emailku. OK glad to have made your acquaintance from Andrew jogja Indonesia
Thanks again Jonathon! I use PLR content on all my sites, all the time. I also TRY to rewrite articles, but when I put them into a program to test their uniqueness, I am always disappointed at my percentage.
So I post it anyway and when time is a challenge I don't change them at all. This makes me feel edgy but you have made me not worry about it now!
Thank you, thank you,
Susan
Really interesting post! Obviously not true that Google disregards duplicate content. I own a article website it has a load of duplicate articles on it. But it is daily crawled by google and I have a number of articles list on Gogle and the other major search engines.
Paul
Great to see this myth busting research published!
In my experience, the only downside of using syndicated content is what I like to call the "two step" competition.
First you need to beat out the other users of the syndicated content with your site's authority, page title, anchor text and your back links, because Google doesn't like listing too many similar pages in the search results. Original content doesn't have that initial hurdle to jump.
Once your syndicated content rises to the top and is in the game, the second step is just the usual jockeying for search ranking we all face.
Do a good job to get your syndicated content ahead of other similar pages and you steal a march on the hard working guys creating original content when it comes to getting good rankings for your keywords in the second step.
Hi Jonathan,
I set up an account with Shareapost but when I was getting ready to add my blog, I came up with a question.
It asks for the username and password for my blog. I understand to set up another account with author status, but what does that exactly mean and what are they able to do.
Also, are they going to post any of my blog posts or do I get to choose which posts I would like to share?
Thanks,
Ernesto
Hmm, I kinda agree and kinda disagree. I've experimented with posting other folks' articles (dup content) and have had mixed results. I've seen some of those articles stick around and maintain their rank, while other articles seem to disappear completely from the search engines.
It really seems to me that there must be some kind of relevance "score" regarding how the content relates to the site in general. I've mentioned this on other forums, and some seem to agree and others deny it entirely. Of course, other factors like inbound links, etc. factor into the equation.
Sites like Wikipedia and About have tons of duplicate content, but they also have articles relating to other articles in a specific relevant area of the site. Siloing could be improving the situation for them in that respect.
I wonder if the fact that the ShareaPost posts are linked back to the original post, as opposed to just "being there", somehow skews things in their favor….
I have always preached the same as Jon here…
Dup content penalties are an utter MYTH. It always struck me as weird that Google or ANY other SE would discount content JUST because it appeared elsewhere on the web.
That's not to say that a site made up of ENTIRELY duplicate content wouldn't be penalized in the algorithm, just that a couple of instances of dup con shouldn't do any damage whatsoever, indeed, depending on the source, it may actually HELP- and what Jon's test has discovered seems to bear that out!
Funny how many well mean folks will fight you over this.Theres tons of website that proclaim to be SEO experts that still say dup content is bad….
Glad someone is really getting serious about SEO and not just following all the others foot prints.
SEO is the best way to get traffic from search engine.
For years I've been able to get multiple listings on Google and Yahoo for the same content.
At times keyword phrases I targeted would dominate the search engine results…with 10-15 of the top 20 rankings being my content on one site or another.
So you're 100% right Google and Yahoo do rank duplicate content.
Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
great advice
Hi Jon,
Once again you have advised us a perfect way to attract traffic to my blog. You're the master of all subjects. Thanks for sharing!!!
Thank you for your case study and proof that duplicate content can rank well in Google!
Great post , but I think there is more to it than just the content. I am sure it depends greatly on the competition that exists for the keywords you are fighting for.
Brad
Thank you John, it's really good to know that. As I am now working for my client and my own website. Well, it's my first job after graduated. I was always scare about duplicate content. Thank you.
I agree with the post by T1 Line. I think the competion from your keywords is important. BUt if you do your research on your keywords then duplicate content will not hurt.
hmmm this topic of duplicate content is interesting. I don't doubt that some will rank (and very well at that). What I'm still unsure of is exactly how long duplicate will hold its rank for Everyone included. Afterall, there's only so muxh room at the top of the duplicate content ladder wouldn't you agree?
Nice idea!
but how about pagerank,
does it effect PR?
Great post, Jon. I think there is a lot of misinformation online about duplicate content. This causes far more headaches than necessary. Thanks for clearing some of the issues up here. It helps a lot! Newbies especially need guidance in this regard, as all the info can be confusing.
I have seen tests done by someone about 2-3 years ago already that proved that Google does not ignore duplicate content, duplicate content abounds through the internet, but that yes, the site with the highest authority would probably rank the highest for a duplicate page. So yes, accepted. I think the point that other marketers want to make with the duplicate content bogieman is the following:
If you can manage to get your content unique, you do not have to get so many links back and/or build such high authority for your site in order for that page to rank well.
Christine
my adsense account disabled. will my site get traffic from google? inform
You've shown from these tests Jonathan that articles can be syndicated without penalty.
That begs the question - what the heck were people making the fuss about?
alex
You know guys, I think Google does not want to have its results with the same or similar content pages. I think it filter duplicate content a bit.
Jonathan
What's your views on mass submission services for article submissions such as submityourarticle.com or articleprosoftware.com? Is it worth submitiing to so many sites. Also submityourarticle offer the ability to spin your article so that each directory gets a unique offering. I know this goes against what you have been saying but they come at this from another point - saying that although all the other sites having the same content wouldn't be excluded, they wouldn't have the same value. Just wondered what atre your thoughts.
Good article, Jonathan. I am so happy to see a 'name brand' blogger/IM'er coming ut and showing the actual results instead of all the 'sky is falling' nonesense which has sort of dominated the blogosphere on this issue for about a year now.
In addition to your unarguable example, consider this. I have a blog which consitently ranks number one or number two in Google for a particular two-word, 6 letter key phrase. Not a highly competitive phrase (I'm not writing this to brag about being number one) but a phrase which please me and which brings in several doall\rs a day in AdSense, come rain or come shine.
Today the main SERPs show the blog in numbe rone and number 6 for my key phrase and also in number 2, in an inented, 'supplemental' index listing. I've had a lot of 'experts' tell me how terrible it is to be in the 'suplemental' index. QWhat noen of them is able to explain, however is why three lsitings on page one is not better thna only two or even one? It's mind boggling the silliness that some folks come up with. My new goal with this blog is to get yet some more 'unddesireable' supplemtal listings … after all I could have had 1,2,6 and 7 posiitons today.
In my non-expert, but tax-paying, income-producing view, listings on the first page of SRPs are listings on the first page of SERP's, period. Appanetently the folks who search on that term then go to my blog to read and click on ads that are of value to them also agree.
Searchers, not we web publishers, are the true experts … and they tell us what to do with thier mouse clicks.
Hi John…
Very amazing with your traffic website…
All I have to say is….Thank you, it only made a tiny bit of sense to me regarding duplicate content, why have article directories in the first place for content if it would be useless to page rank?
Thank you again
Think Natural!
J. Walker
I think you just single-handedly proved the whole duplicate content issue. That's amazing that one can do so well only utilizing duplicate content, I could even do it!
Your stats look like good news for all Jon, thanks for another great service and all the analysis you share with us all!
Shareapost is a great service, easy to set up and use, highly recommended!
Another great idea and site. I do believe that this is true. Content is noticed and credited by most search engines even if it is duplicated. Thank you!
Thanks again Jonathan for telling it like is.
There's no other blogs that I drop everything for to go and read.
I know when I read a post on your blog its always something I'm going to learn from.
Keep up the great work.
Just my 2 cents…….
I have two article directories and 300+ blogs
I have fed content to my blogs with articles from my directories for quite some time and never had a problem, albeit the content was 'duplicate' in as much as it was published on the directories and the blogs. many of the blogs got a PR3 in a fairly short time.
However……the RSS feeds started posting more than one copy of the article on some of the blogs (I won't go into why this happened) needless to say, keeping up the maintenance on over 300 blogs meant I didn't notice this until it was too late….Google obviously noticed it and wiped all PR from the affected blogs and the affected blogs were nowhere to be seen in the serps.
This happened virtually overnight!
So the point is…dupe content on the same site is the killer, and I believe this is where the dupe content stories etc. stem from.
If you feed your blogs with RSS feeds (However you do this) make sure you check for dupe posts!
I have now emptied the affected blogs of all posts and added a plugin that prevents the googlebot (Or others) from seeing any missed dupe posts.
I also use a different method of feeding content in place of RSS
All I have to do now is wait God knows how many months for Google to smile at me again (I'm not holding my breath)
Paul
It has always made sense to me that the search engines would accept syndicated material. After all, much of our news IS syndicated. How could they ignore all of that?
With that said, it's a good idea to provide your own quality content as well. Once you've read a syndicated piece how many times are you going to read it again? You have 8 seconds, or less, to convince a visitor to spend a minute or two on your site, Within those 8 seconds you have to really shine.
The ceiling for duplicate content would be very high. Content syndication is very common nowadays.
What you post is snippets, not exact duplicates of content.
Jon I agree but before doing this….
1) Make your site stable in search engine (links, some good content first…..)
2) while seeing some of your articles in shareapost.com i found google has crawled it but it still didnt crawled your each word…to understand wht i am telling just select one paragraph from any of your articles and google it. if you found its been cached word by word in google dont touch it, if not you are okay…. again they have policies for this if you want your content to flow they will let it, if you not they will not entertain you.
Just to give my writings some weight you just cant pick any thing from any where untill and unless it is allowed to do so or it been not crawled….
so some part of it is right but when done with expertise
discussion on…..
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Shahid Shah
Interesting. It contradicts what we have all been told. Perhaps Google "allows" duplicate content but "weighs" original content higher than copies. And if it cannot find original content, displays duplicate content in its' stead.
…dupe content on the same site is the killer…
Absolutely not. Google themselves have said that they will not penalize you for having duplicate content on your sites. Do you know how many different ways there are in a WordPress blog to access the same content? And they all show up as different pages.
Let me repeat this: Google themselves have said they won't penalize you for duplication on your own site. What they will do is decide which of the duplicate pages to show. That means they still show your content, just not 15 pages all of exactly the same content.
And that is perfectly reasonable. Would you want a visitor to your site to think you only have 1 piece of content, repeated a bunch of times?
Would you want to see it if you were doing the searching?
If duplicate content really didn't work at all then the big article directories would be out of business overnight. They *rely* on duplicate content being accepted by Google.
I agree with you Amin. I also wondering how some article directory rank higher for a specific articles. But I dont dare to do it since people are talking about content duplication.
But is this apply if let say, I submit the same article to 100 article directories?
Is the Google that will ban me or the article directories that will ban me?
Yeah,
I want to add some more.. How about the adsense? Will Google ban adsense from a site with duplicate content?
Raju up there talking about this.
thanks
Lazy marketers may use this as an excuse to build 100's of 100% duplicate content sites with adsense and script automation tools.
I hope they are sensible enough to use the content wisely such as like guest posts on blogs and supplemental information to what they sell on websites.
I haven't tried the serves yet but i definitely will
Here's an idea that would probably make a lot more people syndicate the content:
You could have an option to have your site automatically generate snippets from different articles in one given category and send the composed page of snippets directly to the users blog as a draft, so the user could review it, or to automatically publish it! The system could run on auto pilot with the user selecting which categories he would like to have content sent to him from.
The system could automatically generate a different combination of article snippets for each user, so making sure, everyone had a unique article! The number of possible unique articles would only be limited by the number of article snippets that could be created from the articles in the given category!
It would work much like the articles you can receive directly to your blog with the Unique Article Wizard article distribution serves.
For those who like to do things manually, they could select the articles from which they want to have snippets for a given page in there blog and the system could automatically put them together in one page for them and send it to there blog as a draft or auto publish it.
OK i know this is probably a lot to program, but i suppose you could simplify it as much as you sow fit.
Anyway i throught it was a good idea, what do you think?
Just encase you don't see this here, i'll send it to your help desk as well.
Jayen
Hi Jonathan,
You are beginning to open my mind to this whole thing of duplicate content.
I confess though that i am a bit of a perfectionist- and the thought of going for duplicate content kind of scares me.
But i am definitely more open to rewriting plr articles.
Each time i try to write rewrite a plr article i tend to rewrite the whole thing making the article i wrote completely different from the original plr article:-)
Anyways thanks for you case studies- they are very informative.
Eren
I've always believed that duplicate content that Google didn't like meant having duplicate pages on one site saying the same thing over and over, page after page (more or less spamming for keywords). I felt pretty sure that if sites like RottenTomatoe.Com could repost comments and reviews from other sites and rank well (not to mention all of the article directories), then Google shouldn't object to any syndicated material. It's good to know that you've proven this theory Jon! Thanks for the post.
I've often wondered about the duplicate content scare as I've never had a problem ranking pages using PLR articles or syndicating my articles to directories.
Hey Jon, its interesting to make the point and open minds about duplicate content as a technical point from Google's perspective.
But I hope people will still try to USE THEIR BRAINS to BE CREATIVE and make NEW UNIQUE and INTERESTING content, instead of clogging up the Internet with thousands and thousands of pages of yet more duplicated content in their efforts to make an Adsense cent (or whatever) here and there, off the back of those people who are truly the innovators that write those articles in the first place!
It seems like everyone is just bigging up the **Google is ok with dup content** issue, as a reason to allow folk to get away with poor quality and laziness.
Are we reducing ourselves to becoming like the blog comment spammers? Except that instead of spambots filling our blogs with crap, we are in danger of choosing to create the crap ourselves?
If folk are unable to think of something useful to say in their blogs, and articles - then DON'T say anything.
Work hard, create value, EARN your wage.
Hi Jon!
You're right as always. Duplicate content in NOT really a problem but backlinks really are. Clever online Marketers should only spend their time in "Back Link Receiving". That's all.
Regards!
another great post as always jon….actually i'm your new reader jon but i'm very pleased with all your posts, it's help me from confusing about SEO that make me headache…and i like your seomyth ebook…thx
Hi Jon,
Thanks for the excellent post, I was surprised by this article, because I was always under the impression that hosting duplicate content would get you in the "sin Bin", so thanks for lifting the myth on that.
Regards
Alan
Thanks for the information. I fully agree with you as I am an avid user of PLR materials!
Another excellent post from you, Jon. Very seldom do people go all the way out to prove something. And you are one of those rare gems. Well done and thanks!
Jon,
No thanks for trying to promote duplicate content. I disagree with you on a lot of things, and here's why.
A lot of people are going to be encouraged by your "findings" to copy other people's content and thinking they can get away with it.
You are only encouraging people to SPAM and be LAZY bums, and promoting a whole new slew of Adsense laden junk sites.
You cannot say for certainty that Google will allow more duplicate and low quality content to clog the Internet. Kudos for resorting to such low levels of integrity just so in order to promote your site.
Some people will get BANNED from Adsense as a result of your misinformation when they have their sites DMCA complained. Did you warn them about it???
You typify the typical Internet Marketer with hardly any principles.
Sorry Jon, I had to say it as it is.
Unforgiven:
"A lot of people are going to be encouraged by your "findings" to copy other people's content and thinking they can get away with it."
Um, and where do I encourage that? If somebody takes the fact that duplicate content does work (and it does, as I've proven) to mean they can steal other people's content, that's their own misjudgment, not mine.
"You are only encouraging people to SPAM and be LAZY bums, and promoting a whole new slew of Adsense laden junk sites."
Are newspapers encouraging spam and laziness when they syndicate news articles? Is the Associated Press just a giant spam machine because thousands of news services use their stories? Sorry, but this is a bogus claim on your part.
"You cannot say for certainty that Google will allow more duplicate and low quality content to clog the Internet. Kudos for resorting to such low levels of integrity just so in order to promote your site."
I have proven that Google is sending a large amount of traffic to my site that is 100% made up of duplicate content from sites which are allowing me to republish their blog posts. Where's your proof to the contrary?
"Some people will get BANNED from Adsense as a result of your misinformation when they have their sites DMCA complained. Did you warn them about it???"
If they get banned because they steal other people's content, that's their own fault. I've not encouraged this behavior anywhere. I've encouraged them to republish content that they are allowed to republish.
"You typify the typical Internet Marketer with hardly any principles."
You've hardly proven that. However, you have proven that some people will make accusations without any facts to back them up. That, I'm afraid, is far more typical behavior than it should be.
Wow… Thanks for this great article. So duplicate contents can't ranks well in Google is just a myth?
Share a post works way too well. After 200 good quality google links in a day or so, my site got vaporized by google. Maybe because it was too new and all the links were sharapost. I dunno.