Greetings Recently (before bourbon update) my ranking on my primary keywords dropped drastically. Since I started publishing my articles on all the sites I was able to I was wondering wether it is possible that google is penalizing me for duplicate content. What should one do in order to get this penalization? Is there anyway I can be sure on this issue? Thanks in advance
Check it through copyscape. It uses the google api and will tell you which pages have the same content. The "free" version limit it to 10 pages. It should at least give you an idea if you need to make some changes.
Bit hard to say what is and what is not but maybe this article from Gary Price highlighting problems with duplicate content in Google's index may be of your interest.
I feel like the duplicate content issue is a major deal and is part of the ranking drops I've noted lately. I'm rewriting about 200-300 pages on my site because they've been duplicated (in parts) on various scraper sites online (one posted earlier). Copyscape may turn into a worth paying for service if it helps detect copied material before any sort of penalty is imposed.
The stealing of content is something that the real estate industry has to deal with all the time. The problem is that when these scaper sites take your content it is hard to have this content removed before the penalty is imposed. If someone steals your content the best way to deal with it is contact their hosting company and file a complaint. According to the DMCA, the hosting company must act on this or face loosing their IPs. The problem with this is however that they do take their time and this doesnt help you. Another option is to ban the IPs from the scraper sites and change the pages they have taken, but this may only be a short fix because as soon as you get rid of one another one will come right in its place. Also their are services out their that you can register your copyrighted material and if you do so it allows for damages if your content is taken. Try this site for copyright information and registration, it has a lot of useful information http://www.benedict.com
Add unique text to your pages so that the entire page isn't a duplicate or check with copyscape as mentioned above, if you are the first to post an article, everyone else will be the duplicators.
Surely this is not for real, so if I go copying and pasting my competitors content into some article directorys, then google will down-rank them, I would have to say thats the most absurd thing ive ever heard, if Google works like that, then its much less advanced than I first thought.