Weekly SEO news: 27 May 2008
Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

This week, we're taking a detailed look at duplicate content. What do search engines do with duplicate content and how can you avoid problems with duplicate content? All you need to know can be found in this article.

In the news: new search market share statistics, Google might penalize websites that publish fake stories and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO
1. All you need to know about duplicate content

Although there is no such thing as a general duplicate content penalty it is difficult to get high rankings for a web page which contents can also be found on other web pages.

If you want to avoid problems with duplicate content, the following tips and illustrations will help you.

What is duplicate content and what do search engines do about it?

  • Duplicate content is if two or more different web pages contain the same or nearly the same content.

  • Duplicate content can occur within a single website and across many different websites.

  • Web pages can be considered duplicate even if they are not 100% identical.

  • Search engines want to list only one version of duplicate content on their search result pages.

Search engines want to return as many different options as possible in their result lists. That's why they filter all duplicates in the search results and display only one version.

How do search engines determine which web page will be used for the search results?

  1. When search engines find a web page, they compare it to previously found web pages to determine whether it is a duplicate or not:

    Duplicate content, step 1

  2. Web pages that are hosted by known spam sites will be removed from the list:

    Duplicate content, step 2

  3. The remaining web pages will be sorted based on the number and the quality of their inbound links:

    Duplicate content, step 3

  4. The web page with the best inbound links will be chosen for the search results:

    Duplicate content, step 4

How to avoid duplicate content on your on websites

  1. Hide duplicate content from search engines

    If you offer different versions of your website content (regular view, mobile view, print view, etc.) then search engines might pick the wrong variation for the search results.

    Add a noindex meta tag to your duplicate content versions so that search engines don't index the duplicate content (you can use IBP's website optimization editor to do it).

  2. Require backlinks if you syndicate your web page content

    If you syndicate your content to third parties, search engines might favor the version published by one of your partners.

    Require a back link from your partners to the original document on your own website so that search engines can find out from which web page the content comes.

Duplicate content can cause problems with your search engine rankings. If you follow the tips above, search engine spiders should index your web pages correctly.

Also make sure that the web page content that search engine spiders index on your website has been optimized so that search engines can give your web pages the best possible rankings in the search results.

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2. Price raise on June 1st

Only 4 days to go!

We will increase the IBP price by 20% on June 1st. Any orders placed between now and June 1st will be honored at the lower price.

If you order IBP now, you will save 20%.

There is no risk with our unique Top 10 Google Ranking guarantee (valid for a full year!) and our 30 day money back guarantee.

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3. Search engine news of the week

April search market share: Yahoo! up… a little

"Yahoo! query volumes increased roughly 1.3% to push market share up to 14.8%. Maybe that Microhoo press got a lot of people yodeling after all.

Yahoo! gains did not come at the expense of Google. Google moved up a little over a point to roughly 69% market share (based on the new calculation). On the query volume side we saw Google volumes up nearly 45% from the same time last year."

Related: comScore releases April 2008 U.S. search engine rankings



Google co-founder pushes TV 'white space' plan

"Google Inc co-founder Larry Page was in Washington on Thursday to promote the company's proposal for a new generation of wireless devices to operate on soon-to-be-vacant television airwaves."



Coming in June: iGoogle canvas view, ads

"Google will overhaul its iGoogle interface in June and give people a way to advertise on its personalized home page service. [...] Ads will be limited to the canvas view only and certain types of ads will not be allowed."



Search engine newslets

  • Top 10 Google flubs, flops, and failures.
  • Discover the world's news in Google Earth.
  • Book search winding down.
  • New play sparked by AOL search query leak.
  • Google Analytics posting delay: ecommerce data may be lost.

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4. Articles of the week
Google's travel plans

"The search giant plans to expand its travel offering, which currently seems to be confined to one-off videos and ads from tourism boards. In the future, the site will have marketer-sponsored pages where would-be vacationers can learn tons about a destination and see related user-generated content."



Google's Matt Cutts: Something is wrong on the Internet

"I have no particular desire or plans to charge out onto the internet looking for fake stories; Snopes and other people on the web do a fine job of that. But this was an interesting case, because the proof landed in everyone’s lap. [...]

I really don’t view Google’s role as judging the truthiness of the web. That is, after all, what Stephen Colbert is for. But if someone is sloppy enough to get caught (or to admit!) making up a fake story, I don’t think Google has to blindly trust those links, either."



Google online backup 'coming soon'

"Google may launch a new backup service soon, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. [...]

Online backup services allow people to use the internet like a hard drive, usually on a subscription basis. This is part of a shift towards 'cloud computing', or moving data onto the web so it is accessible from anywhere."

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5. Success stories

"IBP helped me to get on page one of Google for a couple of my search terms."

Robert Hilke

"I've created a few websites before, but when I recently embarked on creating a new site, I decided to use iBusinessPromoter right from the get go.

And I am really glad I did.  IBP advised me on many very important strategies that saved me lots of time and helped me get on page one of Google for a couple of my search terms within the first week of submitting my new site.

I've never achieved results like that before on any website.  Now that I'm such a believer in IBP, I'm going back through all my websites with IBP to help them all get to Page 1 on Google.  Thanks IBP! "
Robert Hilke, www.VeryHealthyWater.org



"IBP is running perfectly."

Michael Kohlfuerst"IBP Software is also in use as one of our SEO tools. There are some things we can do better and faster with the help of IBP.

What is important to me as a SEO? The search engine databases are well updated. IBP is always technically perfectly running and whenever we had a problem it was solved straight away (even when it was our mistake).

IBP is continuously working on their tools since years which most of their competitors did not. That's why we renew our license since 2003."
Michael Kohlfürst, www.promomasters.at



Only 4 days to go!

We will increase the IBP price by 20% on June 1st. Any orders placed between now and June 1st will be honored at the lower price.

If you order IBP now, you will save 20%.

There is no risk with our unique Top 10 Google Ranking guarantee (valid for a full year!) and our 30 day money back guarantee.



Share your success story with us

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

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6. Previous articles

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