Second Opinion on Duplicate content

[San Diego Real Estate]

Second opinion needed will this type of duplicate content cause a penalty?

This content is provided by a third party Vendor to webites throughout the Real Estate Industry!

http://www.sandiego-house.com/default.asp_Q_f_E_realestateabc

http://design.realestateabc.org/alrosson/www/newsletter.shtml

Please advise...

[Las Vegas Homes]

In some cases yes it has caused a problem. Anytime that you use something that someone else also has posted to their website it can cause a duplicate penalty. Real Estate abc's offers this information to several hundred realtors throughout the country.

[HHI Golf Guy]

From what I have gatherered over the years is that the duplicate content penalty kicks in when there are two domains that are identical in content, or two sites have multiple instances of duplicate content with the same HTML structure.

CNN.com, Foxnews.com, ESPN.com, and thousands of other sites post the same AP wire stories but their sites are not penalized. It takes a high threshholf of dupe content to kick in the filter.

[judyo]

I think it's so unfair that real estate sites get penalized for dup. content. Although I don't mind getting a referral fee I'm really just trying to entice local buyers & sellers to choose me to work with, not a buyer or seller in Hawaii.

If I find what I believe to be good content like the Real Estate ABC stuff that I couldn't write on my own (not enough time not to mention that I'm a real estate agent, not an author) that can benefit my web surfers, why shouldn't I be able to offer (to my local potential clients) the same general buying & selling information/content that San Diego Real Estate offers to their local web surfers?

Doesn't seem like search engines understand that fact. We're really local companies and aren't trying to attract the entire world or even our whole country, like many other businesses are.

I've heard that just the page/s of dupe content would be penalized, not necessarily your entire site. IOW, the page that would be seen as being duplicate would just be dropped & not cached or indexed. That's why some just put the "do not follow" robot text in on dupe pages.

[Jade456]

That's why some just put the "do not follow" robot text in on dupe pages.

Exactly. The website owner just doesn't want to risk getting penalized. I know a lot of sites do it for "printable" pages of information.

[HHI Golf Guy]

I agree that your time is better spent serving your clients than plugging away at a web site. But I do have a few suggestions for you:

1. Try and add one new page a week (4-8) paragraphs to your web site. It doesn't take too much time to create one page, and at the end of the year you will have 52 new pages. Since we are a society built on instant gratification (fast food, quickie marts, etc.) you may feel pressure to get everything done right now. Bury that feeling and concentrate on giving quality, personalized content to your web surfers.

2. If you can't think of something to write, why not fall back on an old newsletter or other print collateral piece from the past? You may have to change a few things, but most of the content will be relevant.

[San Diego Real Estate]

HHI Golf Guy,

I agree we all need to take time to smell the roses :)

That was a great suggestion!

Thanks!

[Real Estate Forum]

I agree, and don't forget that search engines are at war with one another and the final algos are far from out. Real estate has been a thorn in their eyes for a while because of the behaviours of some real estate people.

part of the plan for this forum is building a strong community and changing the image of real estate online.

find a strategy that is right for you and HHIGolf has given some great ideas!

[Jade456]

Here is an example as to why: http:// kerdykrealestate.com/

Don't try this at home kids! I'm betting they hired an "seo expert". :eek:

[madeonmoon]

it is just my personal opinion but i would not toy around with dup content websites. even if there is no penalty for doing so today (hypothetically), who knows what will be the reality tomorrow? if you think it's shady, it probably is shady...

just my .02

james

[San Diego Real Estate]

I agree James...why take the chance...we all know that this has the possibility of some very poor results so why go there! ;)

[frobn]

If I find what I believe to be good content like the Real Estate ABC stuff that I couldn't write on my own (not enough time not to mention that I'm a real estate agent, not an author) that can benefit my web surfers, why shouldn't I be able to offer (to my local potential clients) the same general buying & selling information/content that San Diego Real Estate offers to their local web surfers?


There are several ways you can use dulicate content for your web site without risk of duplicate content penalties. Please use only for legitimately obtained content and not stolen content.

1. use robots.txt to keep search engines away for the page(s).
2. use rel="nofollow" in your links to page(s).
3. use an iframe for the content.

Of course with these techniques you will not get any content credit for your pages but neither will you incur any potential penalties and your clients will have the benefit of ABC's wisdom :) .

[Real Estate Forum]

I definitely agree with Frank and James, if you have a robot.txt at least the search engines will know you were not trying to put a fast one and won't penalize.

Unique content is always best, and I say it all the time ... focus long term.
I don't want to be one of the many starting threads like "NOOOO, all my rankings are gone, why???"

I am sick of those :D


My definition of spam depends on the intent behind it, always. You'll be surprised how much a little bit of unique content can do for you. It helps validate keyphrases it doesn't even contain.
You can once in a while embed a little bit of dup content as in quoting a different source, but like with everything else in life:
Don't overdo it and never feel 100% safe unless all your bases are covered.

Those were 3cents, James ;)

[San Diego Real Estate]

Great info Mike...

Thanks again for all your words of wisdom! ;)

[johnc]

Agreed. i would not use duplicated contents as it may hurt my site rather than helping

[JohnHoward]

As for the Advanced Access sites, most of the content is the same on their basic template packages. I started out with an AA site before I realized that a template does not offer the strong foundation that a custom site does. I am focusing on my custom site for the future. I still use the template, but in order for my AA site to get rankings, I've had to spend an enormous amount of time learning about web site marketing and content building. If it was easy to have quality web sites, everyone would have one. It takes a lot of extra effort to build a template site that offers quality content for the search engines and consumer friendly. I get a lot of positive feed back from my clients from web sites, but I also am always asking them what they would want to see different on the sites. After gaining some knowledge and putting the time into my AA site, I have much respect for those that have quality sites and the SEO’s.

[HHI Golf Guy]

Has anyone else noticed that most of the AA sites are now penalized in Yahoo?

Find an AA site, then go to Yahoo and type in:

site:www.thatsite.com

In most cases only the home page shows up. That's indicative of Yahoo penalizing a web site.

But I think this penalty is related to all of the AA sites that still have their own link network going on, not duplicate content. Why do I think that? Yahoo has really cracked down on link networks over the past 6 months.

[JohnHoward]

My AA site fell off from #1 spot to the point were I lost track of how many pages it is behind the first page. I did have the state pages with a lot of links on it. Since then I took the page off. I think it will be sometime before it comes back. The good news is that I have a custom site that was built last year. It’s on page one at the #1spot. The big question is, what will Google do in the future. If they do as yahoo, look out templates!!

[Monkeyleg]

The duplicate content penalty seems hard to decipher. I have pages that are 85% similar to pages from other sites I own, and equally similar to the pages from manufacturers' sites where I got the information.

Maybe this is one of those cases where you don't know if you've been penalized until you absolutely know you've been penalized.

[ChristianOC]

Duplicate content, imo, is not something you should worry about unless you have 2 identical sites.

Article directories are created for the sole purpose of sharing information, and for re-posting. Google wouldn't give ArticlesFactory a PR7 and then google-slap anyone who uses an article from there. That wouldn't make sense.

I suggest you use articles to your full advantage. Follow the rules, and post credit where it is due. Include the authors link and the article directory link. I do not know one person who has been penalized from duplicate content.

Sites typically get hit when the webmaster attempts blackhat techniques when they don't know what they're doing to begin with. Stay relevant with your links, let things age, and be patient. You'll get traffic and ranking in due time.

[TanyaMc]

having a page or two on your site that has an article that's reposted from somewhere else isn't a horrible thing, and won't tank your entire site out of the rankings. However - don't expect the particular pages with the dupe content to rank anywhere in the search results.

[Monkeyleg]

I have a few websites. The one that gets the most traffic is absolutely in no way related to real estate or mortgages. It has to do with guns.

When I created the site three years ago, I contacted all of the major gun manufacturers, and asked for their written permission for me to reprint the photos and information about the various models of guns they produce.

I now have about 1,000+ pages of individual models from manufacturers whose names most people would recognize. And the text for each model is pretty much identical to what you'd find on the manufacturers' sites.

If I use a duplicate content analyzing tool, it will show that my pages are 70 to 80% similar to those on the manufacturers' sites.

Yet just about all of my pages rank first-page on Google.

This is not the first gun-related site where I've received the manufacturers' OK to use their descriptions. And those sites I created are still ranking in the top five on Google.

There's something more about duplicate content, but I cannot fathom what it might be. I worried about the duplicate content penalty, but haven't been hit with it. Maybe that 20-30% difference is enough.

[KaterinaGasset]

I just read a great blog on RSS pieces today about duplicate content.
I am not sure if it is alright for me to post the link to that post or not here.
Let me know and I give that to you all.
I learned alot from it and do not benefit in any way by passing it along other than knowing I may have helped someone.

[Johnyfar]

i like Judyo's comment about "i'm a real esate agent, not an author". however, i belive that real estate agents need to understand their changing role within this technologically changing industry. More than ever before real estate webmasters (who are often the agents themselves) need to adopt the relatively new role of "publisher". You're right that not all real estate agents will be great writers, many may even be horrible, however, the fact remains that high quality, unique content is better than duplicate content.

that all being said, you may not be penalized for publishing canned content. I actually just wrote a blog post about the subject on my blog here..

http://www.paperclipcms.com/blog/?p=23