How strongly does Google penalize 'duplicate content' in terms of SEO performance?
Question: -
Q: You say that duplicate content from multiple websites could kick each site out of the Google index, but is the risk that you get kicked out, or is there a risk that your page rank is made lower. The reason I ask is that I have two domains that share 50% content and both my sites are being indexed.
Answer: -
Great question! The official answer from Google is Google hates duplicate content and ruthelessly weeds it out on the Internet. The reality, as you can see from your own website, is messier. Google may figure out the duplicate content and de-index the duplicate site. Or it may not. The web is a very big place and Google isn't capable to fully root out duplicate content.
One problem Google clearly has is which page is the 'authoritative' page? Which page should it keep, and which throw out? It probably uses links to determine this, but even that isn't fully reliable.
That said if your content is very robotically generated and highly the same, then over time Google does tend to find it out. To see what your site has indexed on Google use the site:yourcompany.com command as in site:jm-seo.org.
The bottom line is you can have duplicate content, but you do run the risk of having it delete the wrong website, and then it is tough to have it properly re-index your site. But Google is far from perfect and your status does not surprise me.
Hope this helps!
- Jason
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