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Duplicate content is a huge topic in the search engine optimization (SEO) space; heck, we even have a category devoted to the topic. But should we worry about it? Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said he wouldn’t stress about it — that is, unless it is spammy duplicate content.
In a video posted today, Matt Cutts answers, “How does required duplicate content (terms and conditions, etc.) affect search?”
Matt Cutts said twice that you should not stress about it, in the worse non-spammy case, Google may just ignore the duplicate content. Matt said in the video, “I wouldn’t stress about this unless the content that you have duplicated is spammy or keyword stuffing.”
Google has said time and time again, duplicate content issues are rarely a penalty. It is more about Google knowing which page they should rank and which page they should not. Google doesn’t want to show the same content to searchers for the same query; they do like to diversify the results to their searchers.
This morning, I noticed a possible Panda update was rolling out, one that seemed to be “softer” in nature than the previous updates, where many webmasters who were originally hit by the algorithm are now claiming recovery.
Google has confirmed a Panda update is rolling out and this specific update is “more finely targeted.”
As you may remember, Google told us new Panda algorithms are being pushed out monthly over a ten day period. Google’s Matt Cutts did imply there was a bit of a delay in pushing out their monthly Panda refresh because they wanted to release signals that would soften the algorithm a bit.
Google confirmed with us that a Panda update is being released and said:
In the last few days we’ve been pushing out a new Panda update that incorporates new signals so it can be more finely targeted.
This is despite Google telling us they are unlikely to confirm future Panda updates.
There does seem to be a wide number of SEOs and webmasters claiming recoveries here. I certainly hope you have recovered.
We are not exactly sure what number of Panda updates were up to, if I had name this one, I’d label it version 26.
Here are all the releases so far for Panda:
Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only) Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally) Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced) Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced) Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced) Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced) Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced) Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed) Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced) Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced) Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced) Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced) Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed) Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another) Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced) Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced) Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced) Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced) Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced) Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced) Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced) Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced) Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced) Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened) Panda Update 26, July 18, 2013 (confirmed)
A common question I see from webmasters and SEOs is how many sites in my network can I link together without getting in trouble.
Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts answered a question on that topic in a recent video which asked “If I have 20 domains, should I link them all together?”
In short, Matt Cutts said that it is very unlikely that a webmaster would have 20 websites on a similar topic and for those sites not to be somewhat spammy. “First off, why do you have 20 domain names,” Matt joked. Matt added, “if it is all, you know, cheap-online-casinos or medical-malpractice-in-ohio or that sort of stuff… having 20 domains there can look pretty spammy.”
When would it not be spammy to do so? When you have 20 domain names but they are all localized versions of your site and you are linking to them, then that would be okay. But even in this case, Matt said you shouldn’t link to all these domain names in the footer — instead have flags or a drop down to access them.
Matt Cutts then talks about blog networks doing it, but advices against it.
At the very end of the video, Matt says it would be a “cross linking scheme” to link all of these sites together, unless there was a “very good reason” to do so.
Eric Enge has published an interview with Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam. The interview is similar to the format he published in 2010 with Cutts, but in this interview, the topic revolved mostly about link building and what is wrong with how SEOs do it today.
In short, Matt Cutts would love a world where link builders thought first about the content or web site and why that web site is worthy of a link, versus first being concerned about getting links. In the interview, the two discuss if link building is legal or illegal, if press releases should be used for link building, the problem with content syndication and guest blogging – plus much much more.
Here are some key takeaways from the interview, but make sure to read the full interview over here.
Link Building Is Not Bad: Just don’t try to get the link first, have compelling content people want to link to instead.
Press Releases Links: They still “probably not count” but your goal should not be the link but the exposure the press release gives you to editors who may read them and cover your story.
Content Syndication: If your content is being syndicated on other sites, give Google signals to know you are the original source. Make sure you publish well before others, possibly use rel=canonical, link to main source of content, and maybe use authorship.
Problem With Guest Posts: A large number of people are doing it the wrong way, guest posts have become more like article directories or article banks these days.
Links: Links are still “the best way” to rank content.
This interview was conducted in person between Eric Enge and Matt Cutts while at SMX Advanced 2013 a few weeks ago.
There appears to be an update underway, one that will be rolling out over a “multi-week” timeframe according to Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts.
The update was announced by Matt on Twitter in response to a question about why some of the search results look spammy. Matt replied saying, “Yup we saw that. Multi-week rollout going on now, from next week all the way to the week after July 4th.”
It is unclear exactly what this is an update for. Is it in response to an update on the PayDay algorithm or maybe the softer Panda update? We asked Matt Cutts and Google to clarify but Google won’t clarify.
Google has said that Panda is a multiday update, so maybe this update is related to that. If that is true, we’d probably be at the 27th update to Panda. The last Panda update we counted was Panda 25 but Google stopped announcing them; however, we think there has been at least one Panda refresh since the last confirmed update.
Or, this update Matt is referring to may be designed to improve the situation with the PayDay loans algorithm having some oddities. Such as the example Matt responded to with a search for [car insurance] in Google UK and the Matt Cutts payday loan hack from a week ago. There are many examples of places where the payday loan algorithm did not remove spam, so this update might be related to that.
Have you noticed ranking and traffic changes from Google over the past few days? Let us know in the comments.
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said in a recent video that using stock images from a stock image website has no impact on rankings.
The question was, “Does using stock photos on your pages have a negative effect on rankings?”
Matt’s answer was very short, he said “no.” There is no positive or negative impact on your organic Web ranking if you use stock imagery versus original imagery.
Of course, if you want to go deeper, images might enhance your content, which may attract more visitors and more links. But, images are currently not a ranking factor for your content, according to Matt Cutts.
Another obvious point is that this is not discussing image search ranking. Typically, you won’t see the same image shown in the image search results. So, having unique images may help there.
Last night at SMX Advanced, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts was on stage to answer questions about Google search and webmaster topics with Danny Sullivan. We covered the session in live blog format and pulled out several key points. Of all my years watching Matt Cutts talk, I believe it has been over ten years now, I have never seen Matt reveal so much new information and announce so many new things in a single hour at a conference.
Here are the highlights from last night, with links to those individual stories:
Google Payday Loan Algorithm: Google Search Algorithm Update To Target Spammy Queries – Google launched a new algorithm that is currently rolling out to target more spammy industries and some of the “illegal” SEO and linking tactics they use.
Google’s Panda Dance: Matt Cutts Confirms Panda Rolls Out Monthly Over 10 Of 30 Days – Similar to the Google Dance, which was how Google pushed out new indexes in the early 2000s, Panda updates are typically pushed out monthly and run over a 10 day period.
Google Webmaster Notifications Now To Show Example URLs – Matt promises that most, if not all, manual penalty notification emails from Webmaster Tools will include a few examples of the problem so webmasters can better understand what to look for to fix their issues.
Google: Site Speed Penalty Coming To Mobile Web Sites – In addition to the mobile SEO demotions Google announced yesterday morning, Google will also add a ranking factor to mobile search results based on the site speed time of your mobile web pages. I have to assume that speed is a larger factor on mobile than desktop, but that speed time was not disclosed.
Google Structured Data Dashboard Beta – Want to test out a new dashboard in Google Webmaster Tools to see errors and reporting on your webpage’s structured data? You can sign up for the beta over here.
Finally, here is the full hour video of the chat with Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan.
Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts has announced that a new ranking update, one that targets spammy queries is now live. Separately, Google is warning that if you have a bad mobile website, your search rankings will soon be hurting.
The ranking update for spammy queries, which will impact 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent of queries in English, shouldn’t come as a surprise to most. This was one of the changes we were told by Cutts to expect from Google this summer. . Cutts specifically mentioned that the change would affect queries such as “payday loans” on Google.co.uk and pornographic queries.
The ranking update is a work in progress, Cutts noted on Twitter, adding that it’s a “a multifaceted rollout that will be happening over the next 1-2 months.”
Smartphone Rankings Changes
Bad mobile SEO will cost you. In a post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Google warns that “we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.”
Google called out two specific areas in their blog post – faulty redirects (“when a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on the smartphone-optimized website”) and smartphone only errors (when “sites serve content to desktop users accessing a URL but show an error page to smartphone users”).
Google’s advice on properly configuring your mobile site: “Try to test your site on as many different mobile devices and operating systems, or their emulators, as possible.”
In addition, just as site speed has played a part in Google’s web search ranking algorithm since 2010, you can expect site speed to have an impact on the rankings of mobile sites, Cutts announced at the SMX Advanced conference.
At SMX Advanced tonight, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts announced that if you have the same or less ads than Google does in their search results, then you are safe from their top heavy algorithm.
In short, if your ad to organic ratio is the same or less than what you see in Google’s search results, you are safe.
This came up durin the Ask The SEO session, where Matt Cutts was encouraged to come up on stage to answer some questions.
One question was around why does Google have so many ads in the organic result. Danny Sullivan joked, would Google penalize Google for top heavy algorithm? Matt responded seriously that even if the search results pages were indexed by Google, the algorithm that determines if a web page should be penalized or impacted negatively by the top heavy update, would not be triggered.
So you can use Google search results pages as a benchmark for not going overboard on the top heavy update.
Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released another video today named What are some misconceptions in the SEO industry? In short, Matt outlined three topics in this five-minute video.
(1) SEOs confuse algorithm updates with data refreshes.
(2) Panda & Penguin algorithms are not about making Google more money in the short term.
(3) SEOs spend too much energy and time focused on link building and only thinking about search engines.
Here is the video and my summary will follow:
Algorithm Updates Versus Data Refreshes:
Matt explained that one of the biggest misconceptions he sees in the industry is that SEOs often confuse data refreshes and algorithmic updates. This is a topic we covered before at least once, but in short, here is the difference. An algorithm update is when Google changes the algorithm on how the search results are ranked, indexed or filtered. A data refresh is when Google updates the data where the algorithm runs. For example, we had a Penguin update recently; and, that last update was an algorithm update. There was a change to how the algorithm worked. Prior to that, Penguin 3 and 2 were mostly just data refreshes.
Panda & Penguin Updates Are Not About Revenue Gains For Google:
There are many people in the industry that feel Google releases algorithm updates, such as the Panda and Penguin updates with short-term goals of increasing their revenues. Matt said that is absolutely false and the algorithm and organic search results are completely separated from revenue goals.
Matt added that in one of the older earnings report, Panda was listed as a reason why Google’s revenues may not be as high in future quarters. Simply because Panda may have short-term negative impact on Google’s revenues. Why? Because Panda’s goal was to eliminate low-quality content sites that monetized mostly over AdSense revenue.
Then, Matt goes into explaining how Google looks at long-term goals, making the searcher happy, so they come back and search more. Google has methods for letting users take their data and leave. Google is rarely interested in short-term revenue goals, Matt added a few times.
Clearly, this is the PR side of Matt talking; but in my opinion, he 100% believes it.
SEOs Focus Too Much On Link Building & Search Engines:
Matt’s final point in the video is discussing what SEOs spend too much energy focusing on. They include link building and search engines, as opposed to their users. Matt said they can spend more time on social media and other areas to help build awareness of their sites.
He then discusses how the history of great sites, those sites generally focus on design and user experience first. This way the user is happy and recommends it to others. Matt added that Craigslist is a great site; but, their user experience is not great. So, there are many startups that come in and beat them on user experience to take over in some niches.
For years, Google stood by the stance that there was little competitors could do to a website to negatively affect its search engine rankings. As natural links became more valuable and paid links were devalued or penalized, Google changed their stance slightly on the issue, but still maintained it wasn't a widespread issue, with Google's Matt Cutts admitting negative SEO isn't impossible, but it is difficult.
Then came the link disavow tool, which allows webmasters to disallow paid or low quality links and clean up their backlink profile, regardless of whether they or a competitor was responsible for pointing those backlinks at a website.
Now Google has changed their stance once again, simply saying that Google works hard to prevent competitors from utilizing negative SEO.
The change was noticed on the “Can Competitors harm ranking?” help page at Google Webmaster Tools.
When the page first went online, it simply stated “There’s nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.” Last year, when negative SEO became a lot more prevalent, the wording was changed to “There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.”
This week, webmasters noticed that the wording was changed once more, to “Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.”
This is a clear admission that yes, negative SEO does exist and it can result in third parties being able to remove competing sites from the Google search index, or at least negatively impact their search rankings.
While changing the wording is a confirmation for many webmasters that Google is finally acknowledging the problem, it could also tip off negative SEO wars between competitors. Some webmasters might not have engaged in negative SEO for the simple reason that so many people insisted the problem was next to nonexistent, although those who have been impacted by it know otherwise. So some unscrupulous webmasters might think nothing of link bombing competitors with one of those “10,000 backlinks for $20” deals that are advertised everywhere.
That said, webmasters who might not follow SEO news closely, or who haven’t had their sites impacted by negative SEO, might never visit that page and see confirmation that negative SEO is a potential problem. The change to the page reflecting Google’s new stance on the issue was made very quietly, and seems limited to just that single page.
It is a step moving forward that Google is acknowledging that negative SEO is a real problem, but it is also positive that they are also acknowledging that they are looking at ways to combat the issue.
Webmasters have been watching for Penguin 2.0 to hit the Google search results since Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts first announced that there would be the next generation of Penguin in March. Cutts officially announced that Penguin 2.0 is rolling out late Wednesday afternoon on "This Week in Google".
"It's gonna have a pretty big impact on web spam," Cutts said on the show. "It's a brand new generation of algorithms. The previous iteration of Penguin would essentinally only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas."
In a new blog post, Cutts added more details on Penguin 2.0, saying that the rollout is now complete and affects 2.3 percent of English-U.S. queries, and that it affects non-English queries as well. Cutts wrote:
We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.
This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh), we’ve been referring to this change as Penguin 2.0 internally. For more information on what SEOs should expect in the coming months, see the video that we recently released.
Webmasters first got a hint that the next generation of Penguin was imminent when back on May 10 Cutts said on Twitter, “we do expect to roll out Penguin 2.0 (next generation of Penguin) sometime in the next few weeks though.”
Then in a Google Webmaster Help video, Cutts went into more detail on what Penguin 2.0 would bring, along with what new changes webmasters can expect over the coming months with regards to Google search results.
He detailed that the new Penguin was specifically going to target black hat spam, but would be a significantly larger impact on spam than the original Penguin and subsequent Penguin updates have had.
Twitter is full of people commenting on the new Penguin 2.0, and there should be more information in the coming hours and days as webmasters compare SERPs that have been affected and what kinds of spam specifically got targeted by this new update.
As I covered yesterday, in very brief summary, Google's Matt Cutts told us ten SEO changes coming to Google by the end of this summer. One of those changes is softening the impact of the Panda algorithm for sites that are in the "gray area" or "border" of being impacted by the Panda algorithm.
Matt Cutts, Google's head of search spam, said 5 minutes and 3 seconds into the video that Google is adding additional signals to look for other quality metrics that may lessen the impact of the Panda algorithm for those sites in the gray area. This is with a caveat!
Here is the transcript:
We are looking at Panda and seeing if we can find some additional signals, and we think we've got some to help refine things for sites that are kind of in the border zone, the gray area a little bit, And so if we can soften the affect a little bit, for those sites, that we believe have got some additional signals of quality, that will help sites that were previously affected - to some degree.
The question is, what "degree" will these sites see a benefit in ranking after the Panda algorithm is softened for them? That is the big question.
So I screen captured Matt's facial expression when he said that and see what I mean? Will this have much of an impact or just a very soft impact on those who have been impacted by Panda? I am not sure.
But it will be interesting to follow and see what happens over the next few months.
Matt clearly said the Panda algorithm will be softened for some but the question is, how much so?
The latest Google Webmaster video features Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts talking about what webmasters can expect to see in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google, particularly changes combating black hat web spam from many different angles in a variety of areas.
Here are nine search and SEO changes webmasters will likely see – although, as always, Cutts warns nothing is set in stone and it should be taken with a grain of salt.
1. Next Generation of Penguin – Penguin 2.0
This update is to try and target more black hat web spam. The new Penguin 2.0, which is the name Google uses internally for the next gen Penguin, will be much more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0 and it will go deeper and have a larger impact than the original.
2. Advertorials
Many advertorials (a.k.a., native advertising) violate Google's quality guidelines. More importantly, they should not flow PageRank.
Google is planning to be a lot stronger on their enforcement of these types of paid links and advertising, disguised as “advertorials”. Cutts did clarify there is nothing wrong with advertorials, simply that they don't want them to be abused for PageRank and linking reasons. If you use advertorials, Cutts suggested that they should be clearly marked and obvious that it is paid advertising.
3. “Payday Loans” in .co.uk
Cutts mentioned that this is a problematic search, and there are others like it, so they are tackling it a couple of different ways. For those that play in that space, however, you're out of luck since Cutts isn't revealing exactly how they are dealing with it, just that it will be happening.
He said that they are targeting specific areas (another example he included was porn queries) that have traditionally been more spammy.
4. Devaluing Upstream Linking
Again, Cutts isn't going into details about this, but they are working on making link buying less effective and have a couple ideas for detailed link analysis to tackle this issue.
5. Hacked Sites
They want to roll out a next generation of hacked detection, as well as being able to notify webmasters better. They would like to be able to point webmasters to more specific information, such as whether they are dealing with malware or a hacked site, and to hopefully clean it up.
6. Authority
If Google's algorithms believe you or your site is an authority in a particular area, they want to make sure those sites rank a little bit higher than other sites.
7. Panda
They are looking for some additional signals for sites that are in the "gray area" or "border zone", and looking for other signals that suggest the site truly is high quality, so it will help those sites who have been previously impacted by Panda.
8. Changes to Cluster of Results From the Same Site
If you're doing deep searches in Google, and going back 5, 6 or more results pages deep, you can see the same site popping up with a cluster of results on those deep pages.
Google is looking into a change where once you have seen a cluster of results from the same site, you will be less likely to see more and more from that same site as you go deeper. Cutts mentioned this as being something that came specifically from user feedback.
9. More Information for Webmasters
Cutts said they want to be able to keep giving webmasters more specific and detailed information via webmaster tools. He mentions specifically example URLs to help webmasters diagnose problems on their site.
He believes that the changes will really make a difference with the quality of the search results, as well as impact the amount of spam that is showing up.
Bottom Line
Cutts says if you are focused on high quality content, you don't have much to worry about. But if you're dabbling in the black hat arts, you might have a busy summer.
As of date there has been thousands of blog posts totally dedicated to this topic but right now I am going to say that, the methods I am going to tell you (which are already discussed by top blogs) are the ones that if you follow them, you would not have to spend sleepless nights day dreaming about the next Google Panda update. So stick this list somewhere you do your blogging and you will be PANDA SAFE.
1. Separate Away Inferior Quality Website content
Google hates short and low quality Articles. So review each and every content on your blog and separate out all the auto-generated content. Don’t let Google to index and crawl your not so good (inferior quality content) areas of your blog because if it does then it wont spare you even a little bit as low value content will cause the algorithm to get hold of and it will slap you with a heavy penalty which will take you months and years to recover from even if you have majority of the cont as genuine and high quality.
2. Concentrate On Unique Website Content
The Panda is penalizing each and every stealer and duplicator. It has not even spared the famously known and huge content farms like ehow and article base. So try to concentrate on your own expertise and write genuine articles and stop copying and chopping articles from other online resources, because remember THE PANDA is watching every content of your.
3. Focus on being an Authoritative Figure
Google is now trusting and awarding those sites with high serps who have the trust of the readers and an authoritative command over its readers and followers. Trust can be measured by any parameter, the tweets you throw out, the links pointing towards your articles, the comments and how many those are on your articles, you social buzz and your authoritative clout you have on your readers and loyals. Write a post which people would want to bookmark, or share on their social networks and most important of all it should be solving a problem and should not be a mere shallow article on a particular topic. Focus on creating articles with these points as your eligibility criteria and you will definitely be making THE PANDA happy.
4. Always maintain Online advertising Ratio Healthy
Do you fill your site with lots of cheap earning ads. Don’t do that because google sees that as an inferior quality of web page. 3-4 ads to the max are good enough and should not hinder with the overall visual and user experience and page loading speed. Keep the advertisements to the minimum and your reader will always recommend your site to others for having a uncluttered web design and site structure and also be good in the eyes of THE PANDA.
5. Keep your Backlinks Healthy and High Quality
Do you like a filthy and dirty neighborhood? I guess no or is it? but the point I want to put forward is that Google does not haapily agree to a site linked by or getting linked to another inferior quality site so what do they do? GOOGLE PENALIZES THEM FOR HAVING A BAD FRIEND. So guys stop paid link selling service because you are harming yourself and even if you have to do it do it a nofollow and not a dofollow ones. And try to build links naturally and at a steady pace because something fishy with link building and Google notices an abrupt change in your monthly link building efforts, you are sure to get penalized. Another important factor after backlinking comes your internal linking efforts. By internal linking you make the Google robots very happy because they get to index you site faster and go through your whole site like a breeze and in turn Google will award with high serps as their robots were happy after site inspection.
So after implementing these best practices, comes the waiting and the recovery period which should last from around 2 months to 8 months as per industry experts to attain the traffic levels before THE PANDA penalized you. Keep practicing these methods on a regular basis and on Google analytics of your site, you will definitely reap the fruits of your hardwork.
