one of my competitors uses almost all dupe content for all of his content. how is he still able to rank so well? does google actually PENALIZE you for dupe content, or do they just not index the dupe content pages?
Dupe content does get indexed by Google, only those pages will most likely end up in the Supplemental Index results. This isn't considered a great thing. I'm not sure if or how much duplicate content would hurt the non-duplicate content pages, such as the start page. I suppose you would find your answer when the next update happens (late July or in August?) for Google. I'm curious if you notice a drop for them. Please let us know.
Google just act stupid sometimes. It happens many times site with nothing but crap ran better than quality sites.
this happens a lot because the dup site uses a lot of black hat techniques to get them above their competitor. Sometimes you just have to deal with it or fight back and kick them off the serps!
Guys people are writing article so that they can be used by others. who has stopped you in using articles for your site. Google cannot banned you because there must be a way to present sites with or without dupe content. By changing few lines and title the content does not remain dupe
This is not correct. Google does not ban you for using duplicate content. Duplicate content is more than just the same title and a few lines of text. A nice article is written here You can check to see if Copyscape finds duplication, my guess is that Google would too.