Duplicate content is bad, right? We’ve preached that here at Wikimotive for years now and pretty much every search engine optimization company in existence has been saying the same thing. Well, this week Matt Cutts has released a new video in the Google Webmaster series that addresses duplicate content in a new way, and it’s actually a pretty interesting take. According to the esteemed Mr. Cutts, duplicate content is actually…normal? What does this mean for you and your SEO efforts? Let’s take a look.
What do I mean when I say normal? Well, it turns out that 25-30 percent of ALL content on the web is duplicate. Literally a quarter to a third of every piece on content online is just copied and pasted from another part of the web. According to Matt Cutts, this means that duplicate content is NOT penalized…it’s just not rewarded. When a lot of sites are offering the same content, Google will only deliver one in search engine results, and it’s either the content originator (if they can be found) or the site that presents the most overall value and trust around the content. This dispels the rumor that duplicate content will get you a hard penalty, but don’t overreact just yet.
You have to ask yourself, “Does this mean that it’s safe for me to start using duplicate content?”
The answer? Absolutely not, but you should hope that other people do. Let them see what Cutts and Google had to say and start duplicating content from across the great wide web while you keep turning out fresh content. Because sure, duplicate content won’t technically get you a penalty, but it won’t get you ranked either…and isn’t not getting ranked the worst penalty of all?
It is, so don’t get cute in the duplicate content game.