Imagine that you fired up your computer and found that a bunch of your programs no longer worked, because behind the scenes, the operating system had been upgraded without any backwards compatibility. That's what happened this week with Google. Some things that were working just fine now are broken, because Google isn't being backwards compatible. And that's fairly unprecedented. Don't panic. One of the changes really shouldn't hurt many sites, impacting only a "power SEO" technique commonly called PageRank sculpting that I'd say fairly few use. The other has a bigger impact and pote [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Link Building: General | Link Building: Paid Links | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Spamming | Top News

AOL recently soft-launched Love.com, which it advertises as a collection of "topic blogs" that "provide a central view into what the world is loving now." But it's really an SEO play. Give the site any subdomain under the sun, and Love.com will make a new site on-the-fly with content scraped from news sites, blogs, YouTube videos, Twitter messages and more. Like this: Everybody loves cold sores, right? Well, not everybody loves Love.com. Says Dave Naylor: "Approximately 1 bazillion keyword specific subdomains filled with scraped content and ads? Are AOL so desperate that they [...]

Related Topics: AOL: General | Channel: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Spamming

A month ago, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced they will be supporting a new canonical tag that allows you to tell search engines that page X is a duplicate page to page Z. In a way, it is a 301 redirect, without the physical redirect. The tag is incredibly powerful, as are 301 redirects and using this tag should be done with caution and slowly. Matt Cutts posted a new video explaining how one should go about using this tag, being that it is so new. Here is the video: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | SEO: Blocking Spiders | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites | SEO: Submitting & Sitemaps | SEO: Tagging | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

The web is full of duplicate content. Search engines try to index and display the original or "canonical" version. Searchers only want to see one version in results. And site owners worry that if search engines find multiple versions of a page, their link credit will be diluted and they'll lose ranking. Today, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (links are to their separate announcements) have united to offer a way to reduce duplicate content clutter and make things easier for everyone. Webmasters rejoice! Worried about duplicate content on your site? Want to know what "canonical" means? Read on fo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: SEO | How To: SEO | Microsoft: Bing | SEO: Duplicate Content | Top News | Yahoo: SEO

Struggling with duplicate content woes? Google's done a blog post today to try and provide further advice and guidance. Among the highlights: Including a preferred URL in sitemaps submitted to Google can increase the chances that the URL you want is used, in cases where content can be found within your own site in different ways.   Consider using 301 redirects, blocking, consistent linking, and other tips covered in this and this, which are official Google blog posts.   To deal with offsite content that ranks above you, ensure that your site itself is being crawled and not-pena [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content

With so much good content on the web, it's inevitable that the same information will be displayed many times over. Whether it's a blog post pointing to good statistics, an RSS feed pulled into a complementary site, or blatantly copied material, duplicate content can be an issue. This week's infographic shows how search engines make distinctions between original and duplicate content: Graphic by Elliance, an eMarketing firm specializing in results-driven search engine marketing, web site design, and outbound eMarketing campaigns. The firm is the creator of the ennect online marketing to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Infographics | Search Illustrated | SEO: Duplicate Content

"Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink," laments a sailor adrift in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The poor guy needs water to say alive—and he’s surrounded by it— yet if he drinks it, the salt content will kill him. As a search marketer, perhaps you can relate. Much like our sailor friend, you’re surrounded by what you need—namely, content—which, of course, is great for your search presence. Yet too much of the same content can be... well, hazardous. A little salt can’t hurt, right? Thumbing through a retail catalo [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content

The Yahoo Search Blog announced a new Site Explorer feature that enables webmasters to inform Yahoo about dynamic URLs that might be creating duplicate content issues or crawl barriers. The new feature is named "Dynamic URL Rewriting," and it allows webmasters to view potential duplicate content issues and have Yahoo rewrite those URLs at the index level. Yahoo allows you to define which URL is the primary, and the remaining URLs will be dynamically rewritten to that primary URL. One of the most discussed advanced topics in SEO is duplicate content. Duplicate content can often be generate [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Domain Names & URLs | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites | Yahoo: Site Explorer

I admit it. I am a search engine geek. Because I have a passion for understanding search usability, one of my particular interests is duplicate content filtering. If you want to really irritate searchers, present the same content to them in all or most of the top 10 positions in search results. In the past, before search engines became effective at name results clustering, many search engine optimization (SEO) professionals, including myself, considered it quite the accomplishment to help client sites appear in the majority of the top 30 search results. I remember when one of my client [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content

What's Up With That? Vol. 3: SEO at the FeedBurner blog answers a number of common questions people have about how search engines interact with web feeds, based in part on FeedBurner having consulted with Google and Yahoo. Among these are tips on easing duplicate content concerns. Some people like (and others dislike) when a search engine lists both their feed and their web site in search results. One suggestion is to do a 302 "temporary" redirect, from your own feed to a FeedBurner-hosted version. This ensures that if you ever stop using the FeedBurner version, your original fe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: Blogs & Feeds | SEO: Duplicate Content

One thing that has plagued the SEO industry for years has been a lack of consistency when it comes to SEO terms and definitions. One of the most prevalent misnomers being bandied about is the phrase "duplicate content penalty." I'm here to tell you that there is no such thing as a search engine penalty for duplicate content. At least not the way many people believe there is. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that the search engines like and appreciate duplicate content -- they don't. But they don't specifically penalize websites that happen to have some duplicate content. Duplica [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content

Dave Naylor noted yesterday that Search Engine Watch appears to have largely disappeared from Google, at least when performing a site: command search. Today, Marketing Pilgrim notes a weirdly similar thing happening to another site and points to an interesting Webmaster World thread on what could be called the "About 260" problem that appears to have started early last month. (NOTE: Google is now commenting on it here). I'm calling it the About 260 problem because several sites have seen that figure come up in obvious site: errors that have happened. For example, consider this se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

Over the years, there have been dozens if not hundreds, of theories on possible Google penalties and filters being used in the Google ranking algorithms. Joe Whyte provides an excellent roundup of many of those filters and penalties that the search forums have debated over the years. I am not getting into the debate on if these filters or penalties exist and I won't say if his "workarounds" work. Here is a listing of the what he comes up with: Google Sandbox Google -30 Google Bombing Google Bowling Google Duplicate Content Filter Google Supplemental Results Google Domain name Age Filter G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Spamming

Google was granted new patents this week on a methods for estimating similarity between web pages and documents which may help to filter duplicate content, and upon a digital mapping system which appears to be the foundation for Google Maps, and has a number of related map-based patent applications in its wake. Finding Similarity in Pages and Objects The patent on duplicate and near duplicate content, Methods and apparatus for estimating similarity (US Patent 7,158,961), list Moses Samson Charikar as its inventor, and was granted this morning, and originally filed on December 31, 2001. Abs [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Patents | SEO: Duplicate Content

Last week, Barry Schwartz reported there seemed to be a Google update going, based on forum activity he was seeing. Google's Matt Cutts quickly followed up with a short refresher on the difference between algorithm updates, data refreshes and index updates. The purpose was to explain that any changes some people were seeing were likely small and seemingly restricted to individual sites as new data flowed in, rather than a massive algorithm change similar to the great Florida update of November and December 2003. All fine and good and reassuring until the great sex blog disappearance happened [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: General | SEO: Spamming | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

Over the past year, I've heard more and more worries about duplicate content issues. It's a serious concern site owners have, though sometimes I fear the worry is out-of-proportion to the reality of people actually getting hit by duplicate content penalties. Others may disagree. If you are worried, Deftly dealing with duplicate content from the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog provides some excellent tips and advice on how to avoid issues with Google. I especially like the last tip: Don't worry be happy: Don't fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your co [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: Duplicate Content | SEO: Spamming