I have a question regarding the duplicate content penalties search engines use against sites. If you have several web directories, all perhaps with different designs, but using the same data, ie all link/category data is identical, would they be penalized?
AFAIK, they will get penalized. To beat the filter, the idea is to include other contents that will make your duplicate sites different. This can be external rss feeds, articles etc. My $0.02
This are some nice reads from my list of bookmarks: http://www.webspiner.com/searchengines/googleduplicate.htm http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/17231.htm
I was pretty sure that would be the case. Would the content have to be on the listing pages, or could it be displayed elsewhere on the site?
i haven't researched yet, but I believe you can add sidebars with lots of contents. [ For example another table or div ] hth
In the end duplicate content is never a good thing, a search engine cannot see the design of the pages, take a look at the lynxviewer to see in what order the search bots index the websites: http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/lynx/lynx_viewer.php