Tech Tuesday: how does duplicate content affect search engines?

February 10, 2009

Tech Tuesday: how does duplicate content affect search engines?

This Digital blog is a team blog, with multiple contributors. The idea here is to provide one blog that gathers insights from a plurality of perspectives about how to use technology for ministry, and explain it to non-techies. (Each of our contributors have their own personal blogs too, so it'd be too much to ask them to generate entirely original content for yet another blog.) Or to say it another way, this blog provides both aggregated content and original content, with the aim of providing our regular readers with practical ways for using technology.

This week's Tech Tuesday question is on the other side of being "non-techie," and much more technical.

At the urging of ChurchCrunch.com, an excellently church tech blog by the very technically-competent John Saddington, he raised a red flag in Duplicate Content is Costly - A Blogger Bedtime Story about lessons learned regarding Google search results.

So I asked 2 other web developers, "Question about SEO-- does (occasionally) cross-posting on 2 blogs badly affect one's Google result ranking (search engine optimization, aka SEO)?"

Here was their responses:

"occassionaly no, but frequently yes. I would define 'frenquent' as at least daily. don't worry about getting tagged by google unless you are doing it a BUNCH. They're worried about real spammers"
"if there is a link back and forth you should be fine. might be better if one was a summary."

Here's an excerpt of what Google say about Duplicate Content::

In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

Hmmm.. from what I can tell, the answer might be, "it depends." How Google ranks its results incorporates over 200 factors. Duplicated content is one of them.

What has your experience been with aggregators, cross-posting, or mirroring content?

// DJ Chuang is a Director at Leadership Network, launching digital initiatives, and connecting multi-site churches and Asian American pastors.

Posted by Leadership Network at 09:00 AM in Blogging, Internet | Permalink

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my experience was noted in the blog entry. i got completely "hosed".

;)

Posted by: John (Human3rror) | February 10, 2009 at 10:06 AM

i guess the biggest factor for me, knowing what I know about the google monster, is that if there is a "possibility" of it occurring, are you "willing" to make that risk?

Especially since there are better strategies out there to create a "blog network" other than duplicating content?

The "possibility," alone, should make one strongly consider the "potentially large" penalty.

2 cents done and i'm out.

Posted by: John (Human3rror) | February 10, 2009 at 10:08 AM