Online Marketing Blog

The second session on my liveblogging hitllist for SES Chicago is the “Duplicate Content and Multiple Sites” moderated by Adam Audette. Unfortunatley, Michael Gray was not able to be there, so things started up with Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Google, and Shari Thurow was added on the fly.

What is duplicate content? Identical or substantially similar content. Also multiple URLs with the same content. Google realizes that duplication can be deliberate or accidental.

Basically, duplicate content in the context of a search engine is publishing different URLs that present the same content. (My Example:)

www.domainname.com
domainname.com
www.domainname.com/index.php
www.domainname.com/index.php?sid=123

Why does Google care about duplicate content? Users don’t like to see 10 nearly identical results. Also, there’s no benefit in crawling multiple urls with the same content. It’s a waste of resources for Googlebot to do that.

More and more website owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content.  For example, if you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue?

What happens if you syndicate content through RSS? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This Search Engine Strategies San Francisco session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

Moderator:
Adam Audette, President, AudetteMedia, Inc.

Speakers:

• Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
• Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.
• Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

Did you realize that search engines have gone full circle on URLs in variables? It used to be considered something to avoid, now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. Google is pushing them with FeedBurner and if webmasters aren’t careful, they could fall victim to a new onslaught of duplicate content issues.

One of the biggest issues with SEO is duplicate content. If search engines can’t tell which version of a document is the original or canonical version, then there can be consequences involving less than ideal search visibility. For example, the following URLs might all point to the same web page, creating the illusion that they are copies of the same thing. But in reality, it’s just one web page.

On day one of SES London I was able to catch up with Google Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik to do a short (10 min) video on several topics important to web masters looking for better results on Google. Adam starts with a descrption of his responsibilities at Google and then answers questions about Google compliant Flash and JavaScript, duplicate content – especially with press releases and suggested uses of internal site nofollow other than for “PageRank sculpting”.

This session was moderated by Chris Sherman and included the following speakers: Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Shari Thurow, Adam Lasnik (Google), Tim Converse (Yahoo) and Jon Glick (Become.com) who is filling in for Anne Kennedy whose husband unfortunatley passed away over the weekend.

Duplicate content has resurfaced as an issue due to the increased use of syndication.

First up is Jon Glick.

What is duplicate content? Multiple domains with same home page. Duplicate content is a problem because while search engines want your content, they want unique content. Search engine webmaster guidelines offer specifics.

Example problems:
- Dynamic urls where different urls can access the same content.
- Multiple domains and one web site