How does the duplicate content rule work?

Hi,

I asked a similar question a while back, and had a handful of responses you might like.  See them here.

There are two kinds of duplicate content: duplicate content that is on multiple sites and duplicate content that is on multiple pages of a single site. I think the search engines treat each differently and of course there may be different standards depending on the type of duplicate content as well.

The thing to keep in mind with all of this is that search engines want unique stuff. It does them no good to serve up ten pages with exactly the same content. So anything you can do to make each of your pages unique the better off you'll be. This includes using unique title and description tags throughout all of your pages.

It would be  the same content over two different websites - one is my group/club one, and the other is like a website for local people to talk about local haunts, sports, etc. The company approached us asking whether we wanted to contribute to their site by uploading our work, in exchange for a signature link thing at the bottom as well as to be put in their contributor profile list - I wasn't sure whether this would have been a fair exchange particularly if we were to be penalised.

angieh, I have posted a rather lengthy reply on my blog that should answer some of your questions:

http://www.emarketingperformance.com/:/1995/search-marketing/theories-in-duplicate-content-penalties/

It is my understanding that duplicate content, within reason, probably won't get one a penalty. From what I understand the search engines, if it isn't apparent, will determine which piece is the original and give value to that piece and all the rest will get less or no value?.?. I feel that if you are properly referencing the original there should be no need for concern.  Please correct me if my understanding is skewed as I am trying to get a more definitive answer as well :)

This is something I have tried to find more information out about as well without much success. I believe if you are going to post an article onto more than one site you should always link back to the original. I believe also that having a date on the original and a different date on the subsequent posts may help the engines determine which is the original content. I also think since there is not a consensus about the dupe content issue that some monitoring is in order. I would expect and hope to see the original article ranking above the copies posted elsewhere. If I searched for my material and found that my duplicates were ranking above the original I would investigate further because that tells me the engines aren't sure which is the original. I'm interested in other opinions on this.

I think Vanessas opinions are correct, overall, however, site authority seems to affect it too.  I cant help believing that if I posted the same article on my blog, and a week later posted on Search Engine Land etc. that it would rank as well on my own blog.

Thats why I would recommend the author tag too, when posting your content somewhare else too, if youre worried about it, and use your name in the copy too as the orig source.

However, the reality is that I have not seen anything I would call a "penalty" for dup content in a long time. More pages are always good, and the sort of dup content that I worry about is the accidental kind, on your own site, like can happen with the canonical (no www vs. with www) or PageName Capitals on windows servers, because THAT type of dup content can dilute your inbound links and PR.

Thanks for your answers and your helpful tips. Much appreciated