Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index

It pays to be original.

When someone copies what you have made, it can mean only one of three things. First, they liked what you have done and saw it as a very credible source of information. Second, they saw that your work is so good that it is worth of some kind of praise that they copied it so they can share your glory. And third, they just want to ruin your credibility.

Whatever reason your “duplicators” have, one thing is for sure. People copy something because they perceive it as something of good quality.

At first, this may seem positive. But if you consider the long run, it will become very disadvantageous, especially when we are talking about websites. Having duplicates of your site or page could spell disaster for your trade.

In the past, when the number of websites is still not as large as it is today, website developers can set up websites even without thinking how these would figure out when someone searches for them using a search engine (SE). Today, it is very important for these people to consider how their sites or pages would show up when someone searches for it in the net. This is because most of the trusted SEs filter out pages which appear to have similar content. SEs like Google only need one representative of these pages. This is because they need to keep the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) fewer, and the index shorter and more comprehensive. This way, they help the searcher browse more links, in less time.

But also because of this, some sites which have similar content are not shown on the index. Because of this, they have little—even zero—chance of being visited.

As mentioned in the beginning of the article, it really pays to be original, especially when you intend your website to be for business purposes. Being original is one way of increasing your chances of making it to the index.

Although most duplicates cause trouble, there are still some cases in which they become useful. These are when SE crawlers can only find very few relevant sites. When this happens, SE users experience what psychologists call the “Halo Effect”. This is when they find out that there are very few links in the index, click on a couple of them, and then assume that the others are just like the ones they have already seen without even looking at them.

In reality, having a small number of duplicates will not hurt. But having more of them, especially with most of your pages, would raise questions about your site’s credibility.

Another thing about duplicates is that it only becomes a problem when you are a small player. The more popular your domain is, the lesser the problem they become.

Another problem caused by these is that they hinder your site’s increase of PageRank. Because other pages share the same content as yours, you have basically an equal chance of being picked, thus decreasing the possibility of having more people choose your site.

It is good that Google had become very eager to minimize the number of duplicates in their SERPs. But this poses another problem. Google had narrowed down the choices of links to very-popular-ones which do not offer very relevant pages. In a way, they have “killed” those pages which are very relevant but not-so-popular because of the low rankings these have. This makes Google’s SERPs as a list of popular authority pages. Along with these popular ones are those whose PageRanks were increased with the help of those aggressive link builders.

Still, there is one basic yet effective way of battling this issue: by keeping your website’s pages as original as they can be.