Duplicate Content for Dummies and why Clancy Clarke is WRONG
For some weird reason (I still don’t know why) I get a subscription of NETT magazine. NETT magazine seems to be a promotional-educational-marketing packed magazine full of experts that tell you what to do Online.
Overall the content is kind of OK and I enjoy reading the magazine…. but today I read an article from Clancy Clarke that made me laugh.
After I laugh I got worried.
You see the title is Duplicate content for Dummies and in the article Clancy Clarke plays the game of “Be Scared, be very scare of Google!” – that so many “Internet Consultants” play.
The problem is that this magazine is delivered to the small business owner that has NO FREAKING IDEA about SEO. They get magazine, then they READ an article like this and believe that Clancy Clarke, is in fact right, when in fact he is WRONG.
In his article Clancy claims that
Google has repeatedly said it will penalise websites that have duplicated content by lowering their rankings in the search result or removing them completely.
Then he keeps digging the FEAR factor with
To combat copyright infringement and spam, and to increase the search result quality, Google penalises those sites that have duplicate content.
The problem with this is
THERE IS NO DUPLICATE CONTENT PENALTY! CLANCY
Oh my god… what?
did Gab just said that a TOP JOURNALIST FROM AN AUSTRALIA IT MAGAZINE IS WRONG?
HELL YES!
there is no duplicate content penalty.
there is no duplicate content penalty.
there is no duplicate content penalty.
there is no duplicate content penalty.
there is no duplicate content penalty.
And to understand this concept please DEFINE what penalty is.
Define PENALTY.
The problem with Clancy is that like many other guys in this industry, they seem to believe that preaching FEAR is the best way to sell stuff.
But may… just may be he hasn’t test his own theories?
I mean how many “Experts” are really publishing DATA? What about CASE STUDIES? REAL RESEARCH done by the experts writing thse articles, instead of “copy and paste” statements they found in SEO for dummies published in 2002.
- Can my site be de-ranked based on Duplicate Content? (If my site has more links, more authority I bet it keeps the rank)
- Can my site be de-index based on duplicate content? Not really. (Please show me how you achieve this)
- Will Mr Matt Cutts come to my house and hit me with a Baseball Bat if I put duplicate content in my site? NO!
May be it’s time to stop reading what a SELLING ONLINE SERVICES MAGAZINE tells you and time to learn exactly what Duplicate content is all about
Google Busts Duplicate content.
http://www.webpronews.com/google-busts-the-duplicate-content-myth-2009-09
Duplicate Content Penalty Explain Myths Exposed.
http://www.technshare.com/duplicate-content-penalty-explained-myths-exposed/
Look what the boys at ROI are saying
http://www.roi.com.au/seo-content/duplicate-content-and-the-myth-of-google-penalties/#.T0gHxIcgf_A
I guess what I would love to see in magazines like this is titles like
- “How to Write FREAKING amazing content and make your customers love you”
- “Why SEO is more about value and less about hiring a company”
- “Why Duplicate Content is a Lazy Idea and Doesn’t pay off”
- “How to get duplicate content indexed and add value to it” (weird but fun)
But heading back to the topic.
So what exactly happens with Duplicate content?
“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.”
So in a few words: if your site sucks the duplicate content doesn’t appear in the front results page or doesn’t get index.
Is that a PENALTY?
NO! It’s natural selection. It’s freaking logic. That’s all.
No Penalty here.
Penalty it’s something different.
Penalty SEO wise is when you have to go home, buy a bottle of wine and drink the whole thing before jumping from a bridge because you lost ALL RANKING, ALL TRAFFIC and you can’t even find your site name when you Google it. —> THAT Mr Clancy Clarke Is a REAL Penalty!
But hey! What do I know ? I just duplicate “there is no duplicate content penalty” quiet a few times……
and I bet I don’t know as much as the Duplicate Content Expert below
Most Commented Posts
Gabriel Machuret
I'm an SEO professional living in the South Coast of NSW - Australia. SEO is what I do... I'm not a web guy, or a webmaster, or a designer... I just do SEO ;) Love it. Enjoy it and I still have fun doing it.
2 / 24 / 2012 4:11 am
Good point gab, love your blog and your humourous posts
I actually read this article myself a little while ago, but I really failed to think about the average business owner who would take this without a grain of salt…
Cheers!
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Gabriel Machuret Reply:
February 24th, 2012 at 6:58 am
hi Big Mike… I know. But hey! is NETT magazine, their job is to sell all kind of Netregistry crappy things like
TRAFFIC ACCELERATOR PRO
http://www.internetninja.com.au/traffic-accelerator-pro/
[Reply]
2 / 24 / 2012 6:50 am
Nice article…..what I was missing from the mixergy energy, is HOW did you get into SEO and how did you increase your knowledge?
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2 / 24 / 2012 6:56 am
Hi Remco
I started building sites and trying to monetize them. Lots of SEO experts have never build their own sites… so how can you rank customers if you can’t rank your sites….
how did I increase my knowledge by learning to FAIL as fast as possible. Don’t look for “the magic bullet” instead learn about WHAT DOESNT WORK as fast as possible.
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2 / 26 / 2012 3:42 pm
G’day Gab!
“did Gab just said that a TOP JOURNALIST FROM AN AUSTRALIA IT MAGAZINE IS WRONG?”
Actually I’m the Digital Marketing Manager at Netregistry – not a “Top online journalist” – but thanks for the compliment.
Just a small rebuttle to your post Gab. First of all, sure Google may not call it a penalty – you may call it a filter – but really it doesn’t matter what you call it. As Dr Pete puts it from SEOMoz:
——————–
The Penalty Debate
Long before Panda, a debate would erupt every few months over whether or not there was a duplicate content penalty. While these debates raised valid points, they often focused on semantics – whether or not duplicate content caused a Capital-P Penalty. While I think the conceptual difference between penalties and filters is important, the upshot for a site owner is often the same. If a page isn’t ranking (or even indexed) because of duplicate content, then you’ve got a problem, no matter what you call it.
———————-
So, for the small to medium business owners that read Nett Magazine the easiest way to convey the idea that duplicating content is bad is to let them know a “penality” exists for duplicating content.
Further to this – my article was heavily based on Google’s Panda update. We all know the SEO world went a little crazy with the Panda update and we had sites both dropping from the SERPs and also some shooting up.
For those poor sods that noticed a dramatic decrease in rankings and traffic (although that had done nothing to their websites) you could say they were indeed “Penalised” by Google.
Carsen Ward from Distilled and Dr Pete from SEOMoz describe the duplicate content conundrum and the how the Panda update relates to it well in these two posts:
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/panda-update-1-year-later/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
Would you not agree that the easiest way to describe duplicate content problems associated with the Panda update are to call them penalties?
[Reply]
Gabriel Machuret Reply:
February 26th, 2012 at 4:11 pm
Hi Clancy
and you guys well are the only IT magazine in Australia that even write about this stuff…
I believe you are top Journalist
Regarding your point I believe your article really points people to the wrong path and even you close your article with the following statement that made me giggle…
“Overall The google Panda update has been a godsend for search results. Low quality spam websites have all but disappeared from the search results”
–> are you serious?
I’m not being nasty… but let me ask again: Are you serious?
I can show you over 20 sites I own that are written with scrapped content, bad English, low level links, created over 3 years ago that are still happy dancing on the top in Google.
(May be it’s time to stop reading SEOMoz and try go out there and see how difficult is to get a spammy site ranked. You will be amazed. )
But anyway, that’s not my point:
The problem is the mention of the word Penalty in your article, because what Nett magazine seems to play a lot specially when dealing with SEO is talking about “Be very scared of the big bad Google”.
You mention in your article that : The biggest losers after the rollout were spam websites.
Really?
Spam sites have nothing to loose. Because they are created automatic.
The real biggest losers were REAL sites, with REAL content, with REAL staff, with REAL humans.
ehow.co.u
enzinearticles.com
twenga.co.uk
shopzilla.co.uk
hubpages.com
suite101.com
associatedcontent.com
mahalo
etc.
So your article may be in good nature, but really paints the “be scared, very scared” and the poor mum and dad that published 4, 5 articles from another site linking back to the original source, is now going to be sh*tting their pants thinking that a big Penalty is arriving from the sky.
And based on the fact that you are part of a IT group or company that “charges” $50 for small business owners to “Appear in Google” and “submit your site to Google” (what’s up with that? Are you guys for REAL)
http://www.netregistry.com.au/online-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/golive/
- I’m afraid I can’t be soft with you guys.
Anyway, thanks for replying. I guess I will not be getting the free magazine anymore
[Reply]
2 / 26 / 2012 3:47 pm
Sorry – another fun infographic re the Panda update…
http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-update-112805
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2 / 26 / 2012 7:03 pm
Gab, the difference between you and Clancy is:
Clancy gets paid a salary as a Marketing Manager.
He has never made a living from his own ranking sites, and like many “marketing managers” in Australia everything they know about SEO is about SEOmoz and SearchEngineLand or the local SEO conference they organize to sell their services.
But at the end of the day, as you mentioned: They are happy to charge small business owners, $50 dollars to get their site “in Google”.
Pretty ironic don’t you think?
[Reply]
Gabriel Machuret Reply:
February 27th, 2012 at 1:19 am
I find it ironic, but I don’t really know any details about what a Marketing manager does Rob ^_^ anyway, thx for your feedback
[Reply]
2 / 27 / 2012 4:49 am
Just fifty bucks to get in Google? I know Gab and most others charge much more than that…:-)
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2 / 27 / 2012 4:51 am
We charge PER MONTH to be in Google. You see we work WITH google
isn’t that right Aidan ^_^
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