Duplicate content penalty duration

If you get hit by a duplicate content penalty, is it permanent? Or does it expire if you remove or alter the offending page? Does it affect the whole site or just an offending page?

 

Google doesn't have a duplicate penalty, it simply removes the page with the lowest page rank from search results. Yahoo is a little different, so which are you asking about?

 

I beg to differ. Just two days ago I removed my affiliate store which was made up of a template that would generate thousands of pages of affiliate products. Up until two days I go, I was nowhere to be ranked on Google. A few days after removing the affiliate pages, one of my keywords went to #1 on Google and another highly competative one went to #36 from N/A. So to answer Jon's question, the dup penalty is not permenant and in my case, Google restored my rankings in a few days.

 

John, maybe you can elaborate on your situation a bit more. People use 'duplicate content filter' and many times it is not what they may actually be seeing.

 

I agree 100% with OWG simply because I've seen it for myself.

Duplicate content is a BIG issue in the industry I am in, simply because my clients use the same content on all of their adverts. Google wisely picked up on this, we asked all of the clients to change the content on our site, and now all of the ads are indexed in Google, and ranking well.

 

the usual problem still redounds to the http://www.domain.com and the plain http://domain.com issue . these will be seen as pages with duplicate content.

if this is permanent, then each and every site with no initial redirect for the www pages will be penalized.

 

yahoo will take you off until you remove that page from your index of it get's removed! Google only deletes the lower one and msn is the same as yahoo!

 

Google simply ignores duplicate content pages. They are excluded from being indexed.

 

technically that is duplicate content, but it is actually a canonical issue rather than deceptive duplication. It will not get you banned. That said, you should as a matter of course set up a 301 redirect from the redundant version, to your chosen version.

I think I should clarify some stuff on this thread (although I have done so elsewhere). There is a massive difference between a duplicate content filter and a duplicate content penalty.

Duplicate content filter.
This is where content is duplicated across unrelated sites on different class IP's with different ownership etc. In this instance the duplicate pages are simply filtered out in the SERP's

Duplicate content penalty.
This is where content is duplicated across related domains or even on the same domain via sub directories or sub domains. As this is a conscious attempt to deceive the search engines it CAN get the domain banned.

 

For those wondering, a .htaccess file placed in your root folder can automatically redirect the non www version and solve this issue. This is one of the first things that should be done upon launch of a site.

For the non www to www. redirect (http://www.yourdomain.com)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301]

Code (markup):

For the www. to non www redirect (http://yourdomain.com)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301]

Code (markup):

Personally, I've settled on the non www version.

Hope this helps someone, at least

 

when u guys say duplicate content, do you mean 100% text duplicate, or 50% duplicate+, or the whole HTML site page is duplicated?

also, that lower pagerank dup page being removed theory doesnt make any sense, ur telling me if i wrote a article, and cnn took it , my site would be removed?

 

No one knows how Google calculate it, but be aware this is fact.

Sense to whom? Why should it make sense?

Let me put it this way, Google says there is 'almost' nothing your competitor can do to harm your rankings. WELL If I was a black hat, then I can take your site out. You just get a higher page rank page, I cloak your page, make sure all other factors are equal, and BANG. YOUR page will be the one filtered. This is not open for debate , it is FACT, it is a common tactic in black hat SEO.
As an aside however, of course Google should show the CNN version of your article, because CNN is an authority, and will carry more weight, plus a link to the original article (citing source is customary). So why shouldn't they show the CNN version?

 

OK, here's one I've always wondered about...

How do articles fit into the whole "duplicate content" thing? I'm guessing using articles on your site isn't going to hit you with a duplication penalty - but are the search engines going to ignore those pages on your site? I've heard people mention that you should never host your own articles on your own server...

Cheers,

Bob

 

More explaination needed

same as other content, but most good article resources have other stuff on page to differentiate pages

What I said above applies. If you have the same article on multiple pages on your own site then yes.

I assume you are talking about hosting your own articles plus distributing them? If this is the case, then no the search engines will not ignore them, although they might be filtered out from a SERP depending on other factors as I mentioned above.

Only if you have a cabbage on your monitor is it safe to do that Seriously they are talking through their backsides. Articles are content and if it is decent content then it should be on your site if it is relevent

 

I dont know that there is a time on such a penalty.

 

If you have vast amounts of duplicate content on the same domain and are punishied for it, the penalty will remain until such time it is removed, and then for a while. Most google penalties run 3 months, 6 months, 12 months indefinitely.

 

Is there an easy way to check a site for duplicate content? For instance maybe in SQL to check for matching titles or something?

 

try copyscape that will tell you if your content is being ripped off or duplicated

 

i'm testing by putting adsense-ready pages in my website section..see whether the traffic goes up or down..

 

So will I be penalized for having the same content on fightsonglyrics.com and fightsonglyrics.net?

Should I remove the content from .net?