Google explains duplicate content 'penalties'

15th September 2008

There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty for websites, according to Google's Susan Moskwa.

The webmaster trends analyst wrote on the Google Webmaster Central blog that it is only deliberate duplication that is likely to result in any negative effect on search engine rankings.

She said that website owners can ensure they never experience this by avoiding affiliate networks that do not offer original content and remembering to only post unique items on multiple sub-domains, domains and pages.

"Most search engines strive for a certain level of variety; they want to show you ten different results on a search results page, not ten different URLs that all have the same content," Ms Moskwa explained.

Sven Naumann of the Google search quality team wrote on the same blog earlier this year that the search engine is usually capable of determining what the original source of duplicated content is, meaning that webmasters do not usually incur any penalties.