You know? I’m a girl… and of course I LOVE to gossip, it is like second nature. But any good gossiper understands the rules and limitations of IT, and never gets caught up in believing a rumor is actually the truth, especially when interpretations come into play.

What never ceases to amuse me (and scare me to a certain point) is to see gossip and rumors spreading in business and people actually acting on it!

The duplicate content “penalty” is one of those things that just doesn’t make sense…

Why would a good resource be “punished” because others find it valuable and it is spreading virally in the internet?

Why would replicated landing pages for PPC campaigns be punished because they are changed to fit the campaign to the letter and enhance the user experience?

Why are there are so many article directories, if not for people go and grab valuable information for their own blogs, letters, or whatever?

And the main questions in practical terms are: Are they really being punished? If so, how?

Now, let’s start at the beginning. What is duplicate content? Recently, I run a Poll to see if people had any idea of what it was about…

Here are the results so far…

Google had a mysterious and difficult to read attitude for a long time. But, about a year or so ago, they got really organized and started caring for all the players in the game better. The difference came as a consequence of Web 2.0 and the fact that public and publishers don’t have a dividing line anymore… so if they want to go on cherishing the browsers… they need to start taking care of those who build the content. Because now, we are all mixed up in a big salad…

So, now that Google actually takes the time to talk to us, why not go to the source?

Here is what Google says duplicate content is…

Here is what Google says about the duplicate content penalty…

Demystifying the duplicate content penalty, by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst


Enjoy!