Google Debunks The Duplicate Content Penalty Myth (Part 1)
By Anna Johnson on September 29th, 2008There are at least two myths circulating in the Internet marketing and search engine optimization communities that frustrate me no end. They frustrate me for two chief reasons:
- These myths cause real DAMAGE to people’s businesses by inciting them to devote time, resources and money to the WRONG things; and
- They allow wannabe experts to continue selling their B.S. at others’ expense.
The first myth is the ‘duplicate content penalty’ myth – the idea that the search engines will ‘penalize’ you e.g. remove your site from the index or lower your ranking – if you publish the same content more than once on the Internet.
This is JUST NOT TRUE.
There are sooo many examples of duplicate content being routinely indexed by the search engines. Just do a search on the title of an article syndicated by Reuters or the Associated Press. Up will come results for the same article on lots of different news sites.
Let’s face it. If the search engines de-indexed sites for publishing the same articles… there would be NO news sites listed in the search engines at all!
And that’s just one example.
But if you don’t believe me when I say the duplicate content penalty is a myth, hear it from the horse’s mouth. This is what Susan Moskwa said in a recent post to the Official Google Blog:
“There’s no such thing as a duplicate content penalty.”
Couldn’t be clearer than that.
Okay, so why do concerns about publishing duplicate content – either on your own site or on others’ sites – persist? Two reasons.
