Duplicate Content | What Is It Exactly?

Of late, duplicate content has become a widely discussed topic, mainly due to the effective filters devised and implemented by search engines on the Internet. Duplicate content, also referred to as “search engine spam” involves deliberate production of irrelevant and sub-standard search results by search engines.

Often, search results include duplicate or plagiarized web pages, mainly created to increase the website traffic. The proprietors or creators of many websites like to believe, that the presence of the same article twice, would increase the chances of the website of being listed in search results, due to the presence of a greater number of keywords.

In order to produce more accurate search results, search engines on the Internet now use filters which detect and remove duplicate content, thus producing relevant results.

Duplicate content is never penalized. They are simply removed from the search results.

Search result pages are assessed on the basis of their relevance to the keywords entered, and points are deducted only if they are found irrelevant. Hence, there is no such thing as “duplicate content penalty”. Sometimes, because the same article is used twice on the same page, the filter removes such pages as search engine spam, even if the content in question is extremely relevant, and of very high quality.

It is important to understand, that duplicate content on a website, does not call for immediate action against the website unless the motive behind such duplication is deceitful—such as, to increase chances of getting greater search listings.
There are four major types of duplicate content that are generally eliminated from the search results by the search engine filters:

1. Duplicate pages on the same website, as well as identical websites. Sometimes, websites that are affiliated to other websites and therefore, somewhat similar in appearance, may also be inadvertently removed by the filter.
2. Plagiarized or “scraped” content. Such content is generally taken from an already existing website, its appearance altered, and then put on the new website.
3. Online commercial websites often use the same description as created by the manufacturer of a particular product, to endorse the same product on their own page. Such repetitions are eliminated by the search engine filters.
4. Circulated articles. Articles that are written and circulated on the internet, and hence published in more than one place, also often falls prey to the search engine filter; even if the objective behind such distribution is not manipulative.

The duplicate content filter reads and stores information in its database. It then decides whether a particular page ought to be filtered or not, depending on its overall relevance, and the repetition of content.

Sometimes, even if pages are not really spam, but contain somewhat similar matter, they may be eliminated from the search result by the duplicate content filter. Undeserved elimination of this kind may be prevented by the use of “Similar Page Checkers”, which detect any form of repetition of content on the page.

Another popular website is www.copyscape.com , which serves as an effective online tool, to prevent removal of relevant, good quality articles.