| Duplicate content is becoming an increasing issue for | | | | whereby content is freely offered up to other sites in |
| popular search engines. Without doubt it's something | | | | order for a link back. While this can quickly create |
| any self-respecting webmaster should be aware of, | | | | several fresh inbound links, improving 'link popularity', the |
| and the fact that Google is starting to become more | | | | process does multiply the instances of the same |
| focused on the issue.......for that reason alone they need | | | | content. Anyone regularly carrying out article |
| to take note. | | | | syndication will notice how Google initially lists possibly |
| From a search engine perspective duplicated pages | | | | hundreds of pages and then reduces them down over |
| are a bit of a headache. It's difficult to know which | | | | time to just a few. Some content of course is just |
| page to serve up in search results if so many of them | | | | simply stolen. To help a little in this area it may be |
| are the same. In order to compete, those behind | | | | worth copyrighting material especially if the content is |
| search engine algorithms are working harder and | | | | highly productive to generating traffic and enquiries etc. |
| harder to make search results more relevant to the | | | | Another area in which you can fall fowl is by recycling |
| user. Offering the user a batch of results of a very | | | | content. If a website contains several pages which |
| similar nature can hardly be considered the best | | | | share very similar paragraphs, it may be best to try |
| service; therefore duplication is now being targeted. | | | | reducing them down or combining pages. |
| Duplication often happens without webmasters really | | | | As many search engines are becoming more sensitive |
| realising it. Organisations with mirror sites should be | | | | to the issue it's seems like just a matter of time before |
| among the first to give the issue some thought. Multiple | | | | duplication has a real impact. While focus is often on |
| domains pointing to the same page is a well used trick | | | | Google, other search engines are beginning to turn the |
| that'll now potentially get you into trouble. Webmasters | | | | screw. Yahoo for instance now tries to reduce the |
| should also give consideration to content that may be | | | | frequency in which duplicate content is crawled. |
| repeated in PDF files and printer friendly pages etc. In | | | | Another good reason why you may find your site |
| instances such as these good use of robots.txt can | | | | slipping in search results. |
| allow you to determine what pages get priority in | | | | This article is free to republish provided the resource |
| search results rather than leaving it to chance. | | | | information remains intact. |
| Many webmasters now carryout article syndication, | | | | |