I just came across this excellent post at WebProNews that brought to my attention a new video posted by the Google  Search Quality Team. The video discusses duplicate content on Google and how it is managed. The best part is it once again highlights that Google does not penalize for duplicate content – it merely omits content that is redundant within specific searches. In fact, content that may be omitted on one search may be highly ranked in another search.

Anyway, it is worth viewing for anyone who may still be concerned and/or confused about how Google handles duplicate content:

Today is the launch of our new website. Unfortunately the majority of our blog content still resides on news.stepforth.com while we deal with transition issues so here are the top posts on Links from the old SEO blog.

‘The ins & outs of Link Building’

3 Methods to Build Links with a Blog – An Interview with Ross Dunn

‘Advantages of blogging for building valuable links and reputation online.’

Building Links with Directory Submissions

‘Some things to consider before using online directories to build links to your site’ Read more…

A big thanks to the wonderful Abby Prince from WebProNews for interviewing Matt Cutts explaining what the new Canonical tag is for and why it was created.

Today at the SMX West conference, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft just announced a new tag that will have a major impact on reducing the amount of duplicate content issues found online and it will help website owners reclaim valuable link popularity.

In this article Canonical URL Links by WordPress specialist Joost de Valk he explains the tag and reasoning behind it. I will give a quick synopsis myself below but his article has some more detail if you need it. Read more…

It is now a widely known fact that duplicate content is bad (with some exceptions such as BLOGS where it is expected). Yesterday on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Maile Ohye posted some important notes on duplicate content directed at those who use multiple URL parameters on their site.

Essentially, variables placed in a URL for the purposes of tracking will result in duplicate content. This tracking can be in the form of affiliate ID’s, session ID’s, or any other form of tracking you may be implementing.

While the article does not address if there are possible penalties due to these duplicate URL’s it does point out that these longer URL’s can offset branding efforts and decrease the chance of your listing being selected by the searcher.

So how can you help search engines to understand your site? By removing any unnecessary URL parameters and submitting an XML sitemap with the clean version of each of URL will help, but your best bet is to permanently clean it up through the use of cookies. By 301 redirecting any inbound affiliate ID or tracking encoded links to the short clean URL and storing those affiliate and tracking variables in a cookie you can ensure that only one version of each URL is accessible on your site.

Duplicate content can come in many forms. Ross Dunn has published some articles which cover other aspects of duplicate content:

Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings
What Determines Duplicate Content SPAM?
Does Article Syndication Amount to a Duplicate Content Penalty

Google Product Manager Vanessa Fox posted her notes from the Duplicate Content Summit at SMX Advanced. She discusses some of the recommendations from the audience members and some of the questions and answers from the audience. It is worth a read if even just want to reassure yourself with words from a bonafide Googler.

Want more info from SMX Advanced? Here is part 1 of my SMX Advanced notes. Part 2 will be released today or tomorrow.

My apologies to my readers for such a quiet week on the StepForth SEO Blog and for the nonexistent newsletter. I have been very busy trying to catch up on open contracts and prepare for my adventure to New York next week for the Search Engine Strategies conference.

I promise I will make it up to you next week with coverage from the conference. Read more…

Complete Question: “How about duplicate content for resellers where the manufacturer or producer of a product describes a product with technical details and so on. Do I have to rewrite text, create my own descriptions? Or is Google able to recognize that i have to use the original text from the manufacturer and not to punish me?”

Answer: Google has a powerful algorithm that may be able to determine “right” or “wrong” duplicate content. That said, I would not rely on it. In this scenario I would rewrite the product descriptions wherever possible and improve the optimization of each description while I was at it. After all, many default descriptions are boring and less than ideal for rankings anyway.

But allow me to remind you of one thing… If you are talking about a shopping cart system where you have thousands of widgets and they all appear using similar text then DO NOT be overly concerned about this duplicate content; it is not a threat to your rankings. Yes it is usually ideal to have unique content but in this case just concern yourself with balancing this duplicate content with added value within the rest of the site. You can do this by adding unique pages dedicated to each widget. These pages can be created whatever unique content you want (diagrams, specs, reviews, etc.) but they ultimately serve to introduce a particular widget to users (and search engines) while providing direct links to the appropriate section of the cart.

This SEO answer is a follow-up to a common question I received from my recent article “The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication“.

To be as clear as possible with my answer I am going to break it down into two sections: one for those who syndicate their own content and the other for those who publish syndicated content.

Please keep in mind, however, duplicate content is not an exact science or anything close to that. As I wrote this article, I often imagined exceptions where a penalty would or would not take place. That said the following answers are based on what my experience dictates to be the most common scenarios. Read more…

Hello all, I wanted to clear up a significant issue with my recent article “The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication“. It was edited closely but apparently not quite close enough. Please note the following change in a question within the article: Read more…