Axandra news archive: 2 January 2007

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Duplicate content is a problem that worries many webmasters. Rumor has it that duplicate content can hurt your Google rankings and that web pages that copy your web site content can harm your rankings.

For that reason, Google recently made an official statement about duplicate content.

What is duplicate content and what is not duplicate content?

Duplicate content are substantive blocks of contents within the same domain or across different domains that are identical or very similar.

Google mentions several things that can lead to duplicate content:

"Forums that generate both regular and stripped-down mobile-targeted pages, store items shown (and -- worse yet -- linked) via multiple distinct URLs, and so on. In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries."

If the same article is available in multiple languages (for example English and Spanish) then Google doesn't view that as duplicate content. Occasional snippets such as quotes also won't be flagged as duplicate content.

What does Google do if it finds duplicate content?

Google tries to filter duplicate content from the search results. The reason for that is that Google wants to present a diverse cross-section of unique content in the search results.

"During our crawling and when serving search results, we try hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has articles in 'regular' and 'printer' versions and neither set is blocked in robots.txt or via a noindex meta tag, we'll choose one version to list.

In the rare cases in which we perceive that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved.

However, we prefer to focus on filtering rather than ranking adjustments ... so in the vast majority of cases, the worst thing that'll befall webmasters is to see the "less desired" version of a page shown in our index."

That simply means that Google will pick one of the web pages if it finds more than one page with the same content.

How can you avoid duplicate content problems with your web site?

1. Tell search engines which pages they should index: If the printer friendly versions should not be indexed, block them in your robots.txt file.
   
   
2. Use 301 redirections: If you restructured your web site, use permanent 301 redirections to redirect users and search engine spiders.
   
   
3. Always use the same links to link to a page on your site: Don't link to /page, /page/ and /page/index.htm if the URLs always display the same web page.
   
   
4. Use top level domains to handle language specific content: If you have German pages, use a .de domain for these pages.
   
   
5. Use the preferred domain feature of Google's webmaster tools: Google allows you to choose if you prefer the www version or the non-www version of your URLs.
   
   
6. Syndicate carefully: Make sure that other web sites link back to your site if they use your content.
   
   
7. Avoid boilerplate repetition and publishing stubs: If possible, don't include the same lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page. Better use a short version with a link to the full version. If you have category pages without any content, don't publish them.
   
   
8. Understand your content management system (CMS): If you use a content management system, make sure that it doesn't publish the same content in multiple formats.

If you want to make sure that your web pages get high rankings on search engines, you should make it as easy as possible for search engines to parse your pages. Use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to create your web pages as search engine friendly as possible.

"Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is set to launch an internet search engine with amazon.com that he hopes will become a rival to Google and Yahoo!"

Yahoo! Answers captures 96% of Q and A market share

"The market share of visits to Yahoo! Answers was 47X greater than the share of visits to its nearest competitor, Answerbag."

"Google is testing in-stream video ads with an eye toward creating a system that matches small-scale video creators and advertisers in much the same way its AdSense system works for Web site ads."

Search engine newslets

• Google top searches: Based on everything and nothing.
• Top 10 mistakes in web design.
• Page view metrics? Bah, humbug!
• Google's open source airbag.
• Yahoo updates toolbar and bookmarks.
• Google in the New Year.
• In search of new Google in Silicon Valley.
• Hackers dent Google's free email.
• The year in Ask 2006.
• Firefox creator loses faith in Google.
• Google accidentally deleted Gmail accounts.

"Microsoft and Google are locked in a battle to be the most visited site in the UK, with Microsoft inching ahead of the search giant in November."

"While the company has concentrated on search advertising, rivals have gained ground by focusing on other methods of delivering targeted ads and brand experiences to online consumers."

Google Search linked to profit

"The number of search queries conducted in the United States dropped to 31 percent in November from 33 percent in October, according to comScore Media Metrix. But Google gained market share in November, while Yahoo remained flat, and MSN, Time Warner, and Ask.com declined."

How to get high rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN

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• Happy Holidays
• All you need to know about search engine optimization in 2006
• Google's Matt Cutts talks about search engine optimization traps
• Outperform your competitors with better keywords
• Find the very best keywords for promoting your web site
• Google, Yahoo and Microsoft team up for Sitemaps protocol
• The effect of bad neighborhood links on your web site rankings
• Dynamically created pages and Google's new way to deal with them
• Google's -30 penalty
• View all past issues...