Alice Seba, owner of
Internet Based Moms recently published a blog entry asking her visitors whether they think publishing reprinted articles and private label articles will get a website banned by the search engines. Alice doesn't think so. Thinking from a longer term perspective, I tend to slightly disagree that good things like the ability to republish articles will not last forever. Here's why I think so ...
IMHO, right now the determination as to whether a site should be banned for duplicate content is based on how much original content is on the site vs. reprinted content. In time though, article repubs may be frowned upon simply because spammers will always find ways to trick/trip the system.
The search engines will naturally need to tighten their policies to yet again try to deliver original content to their users. Let's spring ahead 2 or even 3 years and imagine that the search engines
did not revise their policies. How many 1000s of website URLs will result in a search using the same keyword phrase most likely used in a single article's title? Possibly thousands which prevents the SE users from finding the good stuff quickly.
The SE's don't like it as it makes their service return poor results, and their users (All of us out here who depend on the search engines every day for personal and business research) don't like it either because, we don't want to see the same article in front us 1000s of times when we are researching a topic.
I think that as website owners, marketers, website designers, etc. we forget that we are far out numbered by people who do not own websites. Search engines are used far more often by standard consumers looking for quick and quality results.
That's just my opinion; we'll see if I'm right and how soon if happens. Honestly, even though it would be slightly embarrasing, I hope I'm wrong. But I've got a hunch.
I do agree that there are tons of quality articles out there written by excellent authors that would be excellent search engine bait on the short term. But once several thousand webmasters republish it or a slightly different version of it, duplicate content becomes a menace and the article is of little value to the reader.
I enjoy following search engine supported sources for my "that's OK to do" info such as Danny Sullivan's radio show from SearchEngineWatch.com or Matt Cutts' blog. Matt is an Engineer at Google.
www.searchenginewatch.comwww.mattcutts.comWebMasterRadio.FM interviewed Matt Cutts last month. It is well worth the time to listen to the whole show. Here's a direct link to the actual show:
http://www.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/index.php?showId=16Alice, your thoughts? :)
// posted by BasicSusan on 2/12/2006 11:11:00 AM / Permanent Link 
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