The Duplicate Content Myth. Busted!

If you search Huffington Post for the phrase “This article originally appeared in”, you get over 11 thousand results. That’s 11 thousand pieces of duplicate content.

Of course, this is one of million examples I could have listed. Every big site, from Forbes, to Mashable, to RWW, to you name it…sais they’re doing us a favor when they syndicate our content.

Clearly, these big sites are not getting punished by Google for duplicating content, so there has to be something deeper going on.

What We’ll Cover

There are 3 things I want to cover in this post.

1. What “duplicate content” rule is designed to do
2. How it works when big blogs duplicate your content
3. How Google handles Triberr Reblog

But first…

In case you just fell off a turnip truck, duplicate content is when someone takes your writing and posts it on their site.

This is often done maliciously, because we’ve all been force-fed the golden rule. Content is King.

Here’s the thing about that…

1. Content is King because without it Google has nothing to index.
2. If there is nothing to index, there is nothing to show in search results.
3. If there is nothing to show in search results, Google is not making any money. But also, no one is coming to your site, and consequently, you’re not making any money.

Or so the conventional wisdom goes…

Notice however, that “Content is King” has nothing to do with the quality of content.

Google has incentivised the quantity of content, NOT quality. This is because Google makes money with our content. For a very elegant explanation of how that particular hat-trick works, watch Dan Cristo in this video.

So, nefarious types figure they need content, and stealing it is an easy way to obtain it.

Note: Even tho I keep saying “google”, same rules apply for all search engines.

The Rule

Google has created the Duplicate content rule to thwart nefarious types who are stealing our writing.

The fact that some bad people may re-publish my content is not really a bad thing. It’s just more of my work being displayed in other places.

We all want as many people as possible to see our work, right?

So, it’s important to understand that republishing in and of itself is not a bad thing. It’s the attribution that creates the problem. Specifically, when no attribution is given to the original author. THAT is bad.

So Google, in its infinite wisdom, has created a rule.

Duped Content Rule

Whenever Google crawls any content, the content gets a timestamp. All things being equal, content with an older timestamp wins.

So, it shakes down like this….

1. You publish a piece of content
2. Google indexes it, and assigns it a timestamp.
3. Content thief copies your content
4. Google indexes stolen content
5. Google runs side-by-side comparison, and finds 2 pages with same content
6. Page with an older timestamp wins search placement

So, if Google does its job right, you win the search placement.

Note: Content thieves try to sidestep side-by-side comparison by using applications called “article spinners”, which substitute certain words with synonyms hoping to make stolen content different enough.

Bottom line, Google has pretty weel solved the duplicate content issue. Unless we’re talking about your content being republished on big sites.

Republishing with Permission

Sometimes, however, duplicate content is taken from your blog and re-published (syndicated) with your permission. This usually means that the authorship is carried over as well.

On an interesting psychological side note, we’re not so protective of our audio and video content since the author can be seen and heard. In fact, we WANT people to embed our podcasts and videos.

Also, the newest form of content, Infographics, is designed to be republished. Something to keep in mind, since we’re discussing the evolution of content distribution. Anyways…

Many popular blogs “steal”, and have in fact built their empires on republished content.

For example. If you search Huffington Post for the phrase “This article originally appeared in”, you get over 11 thousand results. That’s 11 thousand pieces of duplicate content.

Of course, this is one of million examples I could have listed. Every big site, from Forbes, to Mashable, to RWW, to you name it…sais they’re doing us a favor when they syndicate our content.

Clearly, these big sites are not getting punished by Google for duplicating content, so there has to be something deeper going on.

Let’s crack open the hood, and see what’s underneath.

Problem Right Now

The problem is, even when your content is republished (with attribution) on a site like Huffington Post, it’s NOT you who gets better placement in search results.

This is because giant sites like HuffPost have a greater authority (in Google’s eyes) than your tiny little blog.

Think about that for a second.

1. You write an awesome post.
2. It gets syndicated to a big blog
3. Google gives preferential treatment to the big blog
4. You lose traffic that was meant for you

That sucks in my book.

Now, many writers see this as a trade off. The logic goes that if you’re syndicated to a big site, you’ll get more exposure. But, here’s the thing.

You will NOT get more exposure. Your content might. But not you.

This is because big blogs (like HuffPost, to stay with the example) have an overpowering brand identity.

Readers don’t go to HuffPost because of 1 specific author. They go there because it’s HuffPost.

Ask yourself, out of all the articles you’ve ever read on big blogs, how many authors can you actually name?

Syndication Done Right

Triberr decided to fix these pesky little problems once and for all.

Triberr plugin enables you to syndicate|reblog|republish (article spinner?

) posts you find in your tribal stream.

I’ve written an extensive how-to guide on the reblog process here, so I won’t be repeating those details in this post.

So, what happens when your tribemate reblogs your post?

Let’s use you and I as an example:

1. You publish a post
2. Google crawls it and timestamps it
3. I reblog it with a single click
4. Google crawls the same post on my blog and timestamps it
5. Since both our blogs are of similar authority, YOUR post gets higher ranking in Google
6. You get the traffic you deserve

Authorship is carried with the post, no matter how many times it’s reblogged. The Author box is tied to the content. Neither author, nor “re-blogger” need to worry about this. Triberr takes care of it.

But, here’s the real kicker. Here is something you and I have that HuffPost does NOT have. ZERO loss of engagement.

ZERO Loss of Engagement

When your post gets syndicated to HuffPost, the comment systems are completely disjointed.

Comments on your blog are not visible on HuffPost, and vice versa.

With Triberr plugin, comments are “mirrored” across every instance of the post.

This means that if I reblog a post that already has 20 comments, those comments will be visible on my blog as well.

Also, this means that any comments left on my blog, will be visible on the original blog as well.

MAGIC!

Here, try it for yourself.

Three blogs, one post. Check it out. Note the comment section. It is identical.

1. petrafisher.com/21-linkedin-tips-from-7-experts
2. diyblogger.net/21-linkedin-tips-from-7-experts
3. integratedalliances.com/21-linkedin-tips-7-experts

What did I tell you? ZERO loss of engagement. BAM!

Editor in Chief

Big blogs have another advantage. They have a full time staff.

It takes time to coordinate guest posts. Edit them. Create author bios. And bunch of other tedious nonsense.

Reblog takes care of it all.

Oprah Approved

When Reblog feature was still in the skunkworks phase, we called it Project Oprah, because it was truly inspired by her.

You see, Oprah tapes her show in Chicago. But then, that show gets syndicated across 100s of TV stations across the world.

Does Oprah care her content is not shown on “her” TV station? Nope. She only cares that you see her content, and that you know that it’s her who created that content.

There, It’s Done

People have been asking me for months to write a post specifically addressing the duplicate content issue.

I hope this covers it. And I hope you Reblog this post.