If I allow article submissions in my directory, won't it be considered as duplicated content by search engines and my site shall be punished ?
Depends on if you allow duplicated articles to be submitted.... You would need to make sure the submitted articles are original. Sadly I doubt many of the articles submitted to article directories are original though.
It means if a write writer any article, he can submit it in only one directory so that nothing wrong goes anywhere, right ? Its easy to check the article via copyspace.com that its original or not. In this case unless a article directory is big enough, I don't think anyone is going to write articles and submit to any directory. So, I think its useless to have Article feature in new directory. Am I right ?
I think the whole duplicate content thing is totally misunderstood. If you read what Google says about it, they are talking about something completely different than if you and I have the same article on our sites. Now I may be wrong but look at Google news and Yahoo news for instance. They are nothing but a big conglomerate of syndicated news articles gathered from across the web and republished. I'm pretty sure Google doesn't have staff reporters and writers churning out unique stuff for their news sites.In fact most online news is republished stories from the Associated Press or Reuters news agencies and I don't see any of these being penalized for duplicate content. I'm sure you have heard people say things like "If I submit my article to multiple sites will I get penalized." Seems counter productive to me to write an article and hope it doesn't become popular and start spreading. If I wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning article I would hope it it would spread across the web to every news site and blog there is...with due credit of course. I honestly think the whole duplicate content "penalty", as it is widely believed, is a myth. That's not to say once an article is republished hundreds or thousands of times there isn't some dilution or filtering but I don't believe sites will be penalized for publishing something that's already been published elsewhere.
Thank you LakeCountry for clearing it out in a detailed way. Even I checked out your site, its also not punished by Google at all I think. BTW : How directories get ranked on GOOGLE ? Should we target to rank it on a keyword only ? I think for a webdirectory , getting search engine traffic is hard task, isn't it ?
Its not considered duplicate unless you have multiple people submitting it. If I write an Original article I can submit it to thousands of article directories as long as it has my name on it and my website listing it first. it is not considered duplicate. Now if john doe copies it and submits it in his name then google will pick it up as duplicate. You sould be able to check it with copyspace.com and if you think they are duplicate, just refuse to list them.
as long as author is submitting with the same pen name to all directories, i think ther is no problems. Even ezinearticles acceps that article published elsewhere by you but the only thing is it needs to have same pen name and i guess resource box.
I think there's definitely truth in this and those are good examples you use. Experiences I have had are with a few articles I got from a free article site which were given PR and cached without a problem. Directory descriptions also don't seem to be penalised if they have been used elsewhere but I do know using unique directory submissions have a greater effect in getting a category spidered/cached etc
Answers here are quiet confusing. I have heard a lot about duplicate content is not good for SEO i.e. for ranking in search engines. So, I agree to some replied here. But also, some replies states that their site is not hampered by SEO, I have experienced it too, sites with duplicate content have a good ranking as well as pagerank. Where comes the most satisfying answer ?
As typical of Google their "definition" of duplicate content is vague so what's stated in their Webmaster tools is the best info we have to go on. With that said,look at what G says about dup content. "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:" * Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices * Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs * Printer-only versions of web pages The very first paragraph seems to define dup content as content appearing on a single site "Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a "regular" and "printer" version of each article, and neither of these is blocked in robots.txt or with a noindex meta tag, we'll choose one of them to list" Again this is talking about content on one source site. I'm not sure how this works in relations to directories but consider most directories are structured so that the same content appears in multiple places. For instance for me a new listing will have the same exact content appear in new listings,in the actual category, on the details page and perhaps on the top list. I think in this case this statement covers it; "Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.". This is just the way most directory link structures are and is not "deceptive in origin" and is not a problem. Notice there is no mention on any sort of penalty but they do make this statement,"Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results." Keep in mind the context of this statement and remember they are still talking about how content is presented an a single site. Now the last paragraph is particularly interesting to me, "If you find that another site is duplicating your content by scraping (misappropriating and republishing) it, it's unlikely that this will negatively impact your site's ranking in Google search results pages. If you do spot a case that's particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and request removal of the other site from Google's index." What this is saying to me is if you suspect your content is being copied and it's a problem for you then it is up to you to file a DMCA request. What this seems to suggest is Google is not in the litigation/arbitration business to determine the original content's owner. If you file a DMCA request and can establish that you are the rightful owner then you can request Google take action. Bottom line for me is yes, original, unique content is important. Directory owners edit and rewrite listing descriptions in an attempt to provide unique content even so, what are the odds that over time your "unique" content will never be duplicated by someone else. Since no one really knows how, when, at what point or even if duplicate content it determined,it seems virtually impossible to always be completely unique. For instance you receive a listing for Green Widget Site and completely rewrite the description. Now the green widget site owner submits the same site to thousands if not hundreds on thousands of other directories over time and all these other directories rewrite the description. A few adjectives and pronouns will be changed or arranged but the main keywords will be used over and over. I mean just how many ways can you describe Green Widget Site before someone else uses the exact same combination of words. Again, I see the same issue with many articles. Lets suppose you write a review about the latest tech gadget, say the Iphone. I'm sure there are thousand and thousand of other people writing about and publishing the same thing. It would be damn near impossible for that number of people to write about the same thing without creating duplicate ir near duplicate content....."Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar I strive to keep my content as unique and original as possible but I don't lay awake at night agonizing over it, waiting to see if Google will "penalize" me
From many days I had this doubt in my mind. Apart from my main question, you clear lots of doubts. Thanks a lot. This time its clear to me. Conclusion : Google does not penalize for a little duplicate content. But if someone complains claiming that the content is his own, other site will be deleted. But I think unless its a very big site, nobody goes to complain. We should be unique just for maintaining search quality of Google. But not die struggling for getting completely and completely unique content. Thanks again !