Duplicate Content Experiment

[howard]

As some may have noticed, I was once a more of a regular here, but have been away (from posting) for a while. Part of the reason was the time it took to produce my GrandpaHoward CD.

I have also been conducting an experiment in duplicate content, which I would like to share.

The experiment is flawed, because I did not eliminate enough variables, but I have made several conclusions. I was testing duplicate content, but it turns out I was also introducing the variable of backlink placement. Here is what I did:

After finishing the CD and making it available at CafePress, I created a regular page at my humsites website which was very nearly identical to the CafePress page. I posted links to that page in my signature on this forum and on one other forum. After a couple of months, I added some text to the bottom of the new page, to make it a little different from the CafePress page. After a couple more months, I did searches on the keywords "grandpa howard" on both Google and MSN.

I found that all my GrandpaHoward pages are listed on the first MSN serp, but none are listed in the first 10 Google serps. Here is what I concluded:

MSN doesn't care about duplicate content.
Google does care about duplicate content.

I don't know if my conclusions also point out that Google doesn't care for links in signatures, or that MSN does. This may also be a factor in the differences found. The signature links were not the only links, since there is also a link on my main website to the GrandpaHoward page, so that also muddies the waters. I feel pretty confident in saying duplicate content will get both sites downranked in Google, but not in MSN.

Your comments will be appreciated.

Howard

http://www.humsites.com/blank.gif border=0 alt= (http://www.humsites.com/)

[FrankV]

I could be wrong, but I think MSN, and some other engines, still use the "meta" keyword tags. That can make a difference since Google supposedly doesn't use them.

[webado]

A site: search for your site shows this page as supplemental.


GRANDPA HOWARD'S SONGS FOR KIDSGRANDPA HOWARD'S SONGS FOR KIDS - 12 original songs to sing along with.
www.humsites.com/grandpahoward/ - 8k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

Howard's Web Page Help - About

Google is picky how it indexes pages.

If that page is orphan by having no backlinks to it it becomes supplemental. No backlinks can also mean no backlinks from actively indexed pages (i.e. pages which are not thmeselves supplemental and are in the active index).

[howard]

You're right Christina, I didn't check supplemental search.

As to orpahn pages, I don't like them, but it was designed to be a stand-alone page, just to experiment. I'll probably flesh it out better in time.

[webado]

Stand alone means either it will never get into the index or it will be supplemental most likely. For a page to be in the active index it has to be well connected with lots of links to it.

[howard]

Stand alone means either it will never get into the index or it will be supplemental most likely. For a page to be in the active index it has to be well connected with lots of links to it.I totally agree!

[howard]

I could be wrong, but I think MSN, and some other engines, still use the "meta" keyword tags. That can make a difference since Google supposedly doesn't use them.
Frank, I didn't think of that. Good point. Now my experiment is even more flawed.

I also should have mentioned that I put up my own (duplicate) page because the CafePress page was not showing up in serps, even after a couple of months. I knew my main site was in the database, so I put a link to the new GrandpaHoward page in the nav links on that site.

I should also mention goals here, which were not to flood the net with backlinks, but to see how to get GrandpaHoward on Google, since CafePress' suggestions (image tags, mostly) were not working well. I think I have learned that what I did (create a duplicate-content orphan page) clearly did not work!

[fuzzy]

I could be wrong, but I think MSN, and some other engines, still use the "meta" keyword tags. That can make a difference since Google supposedly doesn't use them.
Conversely, I've never used meta keywords on my site (and by the time I found out about them figured it would be a waste of time to add them), and my site typically ranks high in MSN... :confused: Google seems to like me at #5 or lower, unless I've got somethin' nobody else has...

[freemovies]

MSN doesn't care about duplicate content.
Google does care about duplicate content.
Howard

I too feel the same.
I have a directory and the details of the sites are taken from the meta title, meta description, meta keywords and the content of those sites.

The pages in my directory are ranking well in MSN while not performing well in google.

So I too agree with you that MSN doesn't care much about duplicate content.

[-=Seth=-]

were the only incoming links from forum signatures, recently ive heard they have been given less weight by google, could account for the differences

[howard]

were the only incoming links from forum signatures, recently ive heard they have been given less weight by google, could account for the differencesYes. Also believing Google gives less weight to signature links, I thought a low-profile approach would be helpful to tell the difference. Originally, I wanted to get on Google, however, after a while, it made more sense to compare Google with MSN, since my StatCounter came from was showing all MSN, as far as search engines were concerned. So yes, except for internal (navigation) links, the only links were in forum signatures. And this is part of the experimental design - just keep a low profile, make it crawlable in some way, then compare MSN with Google.

[JWJ]

Put your URL into this report (http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop/) and you'll see a massive difference in the number of MSN links and the number of Google ones. I don't know what MSN counts but it is well out of proportion to any of the others. This is not a new phenomenon nor is it a problem with the reporting tool.

[howard]

Put your URL into this report (http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop/) and you'll see a massive difference in the number of MSN links and the number of Google ones. I don't know what MSN counts but it is well out of proportion to any of the others. This is not a new phenomenon nor is it a problem with the reporting tool.
Having already done that on MSN and Google with their link:---- tool, I already know the difference. Google is not seeing the signature links, but MSN is. I think it's been well documented here and elsewhere that MSN, Yahoo, and Google each take different approaches.

So maybe my experiment was not testing duplicate content, but signature links vs. links elsewhere.

Not ready to change anythinig just yet, but at this point I'm thinking it's not the duplicate content that downgrades my G-listings, but the positions of the links.

Come to think of it, I've had other "almost nearly duplicate" content elsewhere for years, and it doesn't seem to bother Google. There are regular links from existing pages on a high PR site to my pages with near duplicate content.

My conclusions may have been correct, but the experiment was testing something else.