I've been developing a news site and i rewrite all the articles myself. My question is on the articles in which I quote people - it obviously shows up in copyscape as "Dupe" content but, as the source of the quote is being given credit, does google knock you down for this kind of thing, or do their bots distinguish quoted material from non-quoted? Is the general guidelines that copyscape should report less than 10% similarity to be ok with the search engines? Thanks for the help!
You can't change what others have said, especially if its from some press release. The alternative is to write: According to Name, there have been... without quoting the person's statement.
It's questions like that that really cannot be answered with any certainty. Just know that Copyscape is not all that great. It's good, but it has faults. Google has content ranked high that such sites like Copyscape has dubbed "duplicate content." Keep your eyes open, and you will see them every now and then. You should give consideration to just writing out a whole new news piece on a piece you read elsewhere. It doesn't have to be anything long. It could be a short blog-type, 250-word comment piece on what you have read. Then add pics, and, links to videos, if there are any. A good (commentary) piece to write on: http://yearinreview.yahoo.com/2010/blog/12046/video-head-turning-moments-of-2010/ Just find pics to go along with your piece, along with a link to the video. Also, it doesn't matter if some of your pages in your site is duplicate content, as long as you have other pages that are NOT. Hell, in fact, the dup pages can be more valuable if your readers enjoy reading them. REAPEAT VISITORS! ... WORD OF MOUTH!