Though shalt not duplicate
Google reacts really sensibly to duplicated content. And the results of it’s reactions aren’t even logic!
Last week, i was testing some settings, plugins and design elements for my site on a test server. To make the test as realistic as possible, i copied the whole wordpress-database to a new database and let the new wordpress-installation handle all the content. Unfortunately by the time i was finished Google already got aware of my test site and indexed it very thoroughly leaving me wondering, why the server response time was so long.
The day after the big indexing fest, my main site got kicked out of the index! And i mean really kicked out as in no-where-to-be-found! The Page-Hits dropped below 500 Hits/day1.
After i removed the test site (or rather hid it) my main site got back into the index. Yet, the traffic didn’t recover and i think it will take some time..
But why would google downgrade my site, when the content is duplicated?? I do understand the need to downgrade those pages that are copied off of wikipedia, but google wouldn’t downgrade wikipedia for that content, would it? Why didn’t “the google” acknowledge my main site as being the authority and the test site as copied content?
There are two lessons here:
- As the title says: don’t duplicate or you get kicked! This is specially interesting for those who publish in different sites. If you want to duplicate articles, indicate as clear and authoritative as possible through well-placed links2 which of the two duplicates is the original and which is the copy. Plus: don’t let anyone feed off of your full-text feed!
- We have to find alternatives to google. Half of the visitors on my page get here through google. This has to change and i’ll be looking into it.
- these are google-counts, my own stattraq is still counting around 4000 Hits (formerly 5000-6000 Hits; i think it’s counting some bots as well, but one difference is that google analytics only counts visitors, who have javascript enabled!) [↩]
- i.e. title[↩]
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By Kathrin, 7. Februar 2007 @ 00:08
Salam,
heißt das nicht “thou” anstatt “though”?
By Omar Abo-Namous, 7. Februar 2007 @ 19:04
i plead guilty.
By 2020, 12. Februar 2007 @ 11:52
Try this tag:
By 2020, 12. Februar 2007 @ 11:54
Ooops, that was html. Once again, without < and >.
META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE”