Duplicate Content

I have read articles that say that duplicate content on 2 seperate domains will get you penalized or possible being banded from the search engine and some that say it doesnt matter. What is the truth?

Well I have a client that has been doing that type of thing for a while with 2 websites and I dont see that their pages have been penalized or have been banned. Their index pages are not a mirror image of each other (just very similar), but most of their other pages have text that is identical. They told me that they actually paid someone to do SEO work for them. I dont know who recommended this.

They also want to expand this even more with possibly 2 or 3 more sites. Basically, they sell real estate - One website ranks really well (#4) just based on Condos for Sale. So they want to be able to use each new site so that they can rank highly based on searches like Downtown Condos for Sale, Golf Real Estate for Sale.

My gut feeling is that they could be playing with fire here. What do you think?

> I have read articles that say that duplicate content on 2 separate
> domains will get you penalized or possible being banned from the
> search engine and some that say it doesn't matter."

If you search around, you'll find there's been a pretty clear consensus on this for a while now.

There is NO penalty for having duplicate content. BUT all bar one of the 'same' stuff may not be listed.

So in one sense it doesn't matter - no penalty; on the other hand, it makes having duplicates a bit of a lottery - especially as you have no control or way of predicting which ONE will be listed.

Google takes dupes very seriously, and makes checks on two levels - for 'exact' duplicates (ie the self-same page) - but also for near duplicates; eg heavily overlapping content, or maybe the same content within a different template.

Once the dupes have been found and delisted, it usually turns out that it would have been much better to have one of each on one site. But there are times when duplication offers a better service to visitors to a site (avoids confusing them by sending them elsewhere for 'the original'), you need to see what's bets in your particular situation.

The jargon goes there's duplicate filters - but no penalty

It's a filter, not a penalty.

It works URL-by-URL, not site-by-site.

Thanks for clearing things up for me. Basically, the real estate market that I am working with (much like most others) there are hundred if not thousands of websites for realators.

So, maybe a good idea would be to have a website that only specilizes in Condos downtown and then have one that specilizes in Golf Residents. And then have something on the site that will link the "Condo" website with the "Golf" website. This way there is no duplicate content just multiple sites for one realator.

g1smd, if I understand you correctly, and maybe the articles that I have read are not clear about what they mean, but if domain.com is a duplicate of domain1.com this could get your site delisted. Sorry if this seems trivial, just trying to learn

I am pretty comfortable with what do to and not to do

Random pages from both sites will be listed, but not all pages on both sites will be listed.

So for any partcular piece of content it might appear zero, one, or two times. You'll have no control over which pages those are and which copies do and do not.

When it fails to list at all you have a major problem.

When it does list, it will not be at the best position because the duplicate will be dragging it down.