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About Kelly Darwin
Expertise
Search Engine Optimization, understanding how to make your web site search engine friendly and understanding the importance of how your web site it written and constructed.

Experience
We have over 100 clients internationally. Many that we have performed Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I have been performing SEO for over 6 years. Specializing in Google, MSN and Yahoo! organic searches. Examples of our results can be viewed on our website.

Organizations
Owner and head technical for River End Consulting Ltd.

Publications
Numerous newsletters and weblogs.

Education/Credentials
Graduated from a Programming and Computer Systems Management.

Past/Present Clients
We have over 100 clients internationally. Most of our clients can be viewed on our website at http://www.riverendconsulting.com

You are here: Experts > Internet/Online > Internet Technologies > Search Engine Optimization > Duplicate pages and search engines.

Search Engine Optimization - Duplicate pages and search engines.

Expert: Kelly Darwin - 10/26/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi Kelly

I read that if someone uploaded a duplicate page to a page on my website, it could downgrade my search engine rankings as the search engines could see it as spam. What if someone created a page with only a copy of the text in my page and did not include the html tags and other things on the page? Someone wrote to me and asked if they could copy and paste all the text on my page on their website or on their blog. Could that lower my search engine ranking for my page?

There is some information about duplicate pages at
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=dupli...

I also have many websites with new ideas, including separate free groups, unique inventions with advantages, and rare information with solutions to help people. Please see http://www.advantagein.com/community.htm for a brief summary. I would appreciate your feedback and help.

Your help will be appreciated,
Regards Richard.

ANSWER: I recently read an article posted by a Google employee regarding this very topic and what he said, in my words here, is that Google will no longer penalize you for duplicate content but it is now smart enough to realize you have it and it will ignore one of the duplicated pages.

We have no control at over someone else copy our content and using it so I wouldn't worry one bit about your content being copied to another site and you getting penalized for that either.

But back to having duplicate content on your own site, I still wouldn't do it for a couple reasons. Number one it's annoying to people viewing your site so in turn I would expect it to not be very popular with the search engine. Even taking Googles word for it and assuming you they would only not index one of the pages, what if it was the better one? Or worse, what if it is a page you are growing and end up putting a great deal of work into and it never gets indexed.

As always I recommend building your pages to be informative and friendly to real users, Google is smart enough now to pick up on that.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Kelly

Thanks for the letter.

My pages are generally different. However, some parts such as the links on the bottom are the same. I have them like that so that people can navigate more easily.

I do however, have PDF files with identical text to the web pages except for the links and some headings. They are also in a different format for printing. I did not index them with the search engines, however, they could get spidered.

I assume that what I described above should not be a problem. Do I assume correctly?

Do you think my websites linked to http://advantagein.com/overview.htm are all right? Any suggestions that would increase the search engine rank would be appreciated.

Your help is appreciated,
Regards Richard.

Answer
I feel like pdfs on a web site are more often than not printer friendly versions of the information already being provided. Google has been refining the way that they index pdfs and have done a pretty good job of indexing the content of the pdfs however I haven't seen any evidence of duplicate content between web pages and pdf documents causing issues. In my opinion I think it is a plus.

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