Google and the duplicate copy myth

Good, effective SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a minefield at the best of times.  It is common knowledge that, apart from a few Google staff, no-one knows exactly the criteria Google uses to display their search results. This is actually not a bad thing, because if everyone knew, and used this knowledge to manipulate the Google results, then the results would be meaningless and no-one would benefit.

So although we don't know exactly how Google works, we can still make some good guesses as to what might be useful to improve our results. Some of these guesses work whilst others will not. One ongoing SEO issue is Google and 'duplicate content' ie content that has already been published elsewhere on the Internet, and has already been indexed by Google.

Some SEO companies say using this duplicate content on your website will result in your website being penalised by Google, and it being ranked lower than might otherwise be the case. Others disagree and say it is a total myth that it will harm your rankings, and makes no difference at all. So who is right?

Well here is only one way to find out and that is to test new pages that incorporate your 'best guess'. You have to create these pages, upload them, and closely monitor their performance on a daily, even hourly basis. It's a long, frustrating process not helped by the fact that Google frequently changes the way it lists results. Put simply, this means that just because a page appears high in the results today, it is no guarantee that it will still appear high tomorrow.

I have tested many hundreds of pages, over many years to try and get to the bottom of this problem and here are my findings.
 
1) If you were to copy an article from another website, and produce a page for your website using the exact same copy and nothing else, then it is very unlikely that your page would be very highly ranked.

2) However it is not just the block of 'duplicate' copy used that Google takes into account when deciding where to rank your page. Amongst other things it uses ALL the copy that appears on the page. So if for instance you used the very same duplicate copy alongside different copy of your own, then in Google's eyes, the page is unique. This is really what counts. The overall 'uniqueness' of the pages on your website.

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About the author

John Bradford operates a UK based SEO company and designed and markets the Ubique SEO Pagetool

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