Duplicate Content Penalties: Problems with Google’s Filter - The Experiment Results on Google, Yahoo, MSN
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Google
Initially, there were 14 sites that featured the article, including my own. Within a few weeks, that number grew to approximately 19,000 or so sites, which also contained my website, which was the actual origin of the content. Then after about 5 or 6 weeks, the number of sites featuring the article fell to 46 sites. What’s aggravating is that my site, which was the source of the original content, was not included anywhere in the search results for this article title.
Thinking somehow this was simply an oversight, I submitted the article the second time. The number rose again, but this time to about 1560 sites, and then fell back to the same number: 46. Again, my site was no where in the final SERPs.
So it seems that this search engine only features results that they feel are relevant, without taking to account the actual origin of the content. This is very disturbing, considering how Google prides itself on its objective results.
Yahoo
There seems to be a similar content filter applied to this search engine as well. So while the results of the test are similar, Yahoo does indeed take the actual origin of the content into account, and currently list 114 results for the article title. Although my website appeared first for the article title, it was bumped occasionally during this time, as if Yahoo was trying to decide if my site was indeed the original source of the article. But eventually, it came around.
MSN
I was ultimately only 100% impressed with the way MSN handled the experiment. MSN seems to have the duplicate content filter right. Initially, there were about 10 results for a search query for the title of the test article. Within two weeks, that number rose to 1244, then after four weeks, jumped up to 11,000 or so. By week number 6, the SERPs total for the title of the article resulted in 16 total. I point out that this number is 86% less than Yahoo, and 66% less than Google.
Listed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in MSN’s results is my website: the article page itself is ranked first, the articles page with the title and summary is ranked second, and then the archives page is ranked third. As the origin of the article, with only 16 results in total, listed my website was listed most relevant. In my opinion, this is exactly how it should be.
Instead of picking and choosing which sites seem to be relevant; as Google is appearing to do, MSN and Yahoo look as if they employ the filter while taking into account the actual origin of the content.
Next: Are People Just Picking on Google? >>
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