I thought Google penalised duplicate content but one of my competitors has 2nearly identical domains that both appear in the top 10 results on Google. There are few differences in the home pages on the 2 sites. The domain names only differ by the presence of a hyphen - ab as opposed to a-b for example. The page titles, meta description and textual content are the same apart from 1 slight difference - a dynamically updated, scrolling list of testimonials, the content of which differs on each site. Why do both domains do well in SERPS? Is there such a thing as a duplicate content penalty? Has anyone seen it applied in a scenario like the one I have just described?
if they are same contact google. Your competitor will loose but if they have done something by which google's Terms can be protected then they have done great
The textual content on the body of the page is identical apart from one table cell containing the scrolling text - so yes the same services.
I don't want to punish the competitor - respect to them! I just want to know how they do it and occupy 2 top spots.
Brian, are you sure the competitor's main content text and everything is the same? I use 'rewriting' software on my blogs and the simple 3-5 word changes helps. I know the big G doesnt like duplicate content, but i feel thats if your re-using your OWN content its not that bad, but if ur grabbing an RSS feed and reusing it like 1000's of other people are, then i think google will be pissed. But i liked how u play fair too =]
i dont know if its enough, the more is better, but lets say one of my blogs is focused on "weightloss" if i want replicate/duplicate it, i have my software rewrite "weightloss" -> loose weight, etc. i target keywords, so its the keywords i like to re-write.
You'll go far having this kind of attitude,its good to see that in this day and time.Thank you When you hit the top ten,google takes away the telescope and then brings out the microscope,and if your site is not worthy of that(beware of blackhat tecs.) it gets canned and will only be found on page 200 How long have those 2 sites been there? never mind I see you answer now.. Strange,I would love to see the urls ,but I know you wont and I wouldn.t ask either.
No. I won't give out the URLs. I respect their privacy. The topic is very interesting to me since I have a site that does well in one country but not another. I've been advised to place a site on a server in that country in order to do well. The easiest thing for me to do would be to launch a duplicate site with the exact same content and start building backlinks but I've been warned that I'll get penalised for duplicate content.
Yes there is duplicate content punishment, but then again it depends. Consider two situations where one site republishes an old post with new data but basically the summary remains the same. And another where one site publishes new content everyday, even for the same type of content, the second post to the same topic is completely different in terms of language and meaning but NOT outcome. Meaning both the sites have done the same thing, but one published a post with the help of a 'format' and the other using no format at all. Which one will do better provided all other things such as backlink, quality, time, popularity, etc are constant? You will see the one with the similar format goes up in rankings immediately over the other one, but after a week its the completely different one leading indefinitely. This is pretty simple to explain, as a crawler sees the content as a continuation of the previous post it seems to give some weight from the old post or format immediately. However, when that is repeated overtime they logically tries to reward the more creative webmaster for their innovative one of a kind writing/content and it persists on. Remember, I'm saying everything else remaining constant.
There is one site copying my content from two pages, if i type one sentence it appears number 2 in Google but for the main keywords of these pages it is nowhere to be found
Duplicate pages may appear in search results. For example, I have submitted many articles to article directories. And if you search for one of my articles, then you will find the same article ranking many times in top 20. Search for "Back Pain Brings Bad News". You will see the same article, but different site ranking in search results.
Thanks Angelina - and the previous posters - for your info and experience. I admit I submit articles myself and see the same thing. I'm just surprised to see a duplicate page that have been pretty much the same for over a year coming up 1 position below the other on p1 of google.