Its Not Google Update - Its Your Site

"You don't need google updates to roll before you can see a huge drop in rankings, sometimes this comes to down your overall site."

This is true. I have about 2% duplicated content on all my pages, which is fine. If you go a lot higher the will kick your a...

Matt Cutts own website show up as duplicate content using that tool. So this is just a myth and i wouldn't worry too much about it unless you duplicating page for page otherwise move on.
The op lost position for another reason, its wasn't duplicate content.

I agree with OP.

I've seen lots of people saying they have seen drops in their site. I want to thank Abtroose for providing that helpful tool. I don't know how effective it is really but when I used it on my sites (none of which have dropped rank significantly but are dancing around) I saw that none had duplicate content.

testdrive does have a good point though when he pointed out that all these sites seem to have been hit at roughly the same time. I can't explain that.

I suggest somebody opening a new thread on and everybody who has seen their ranking drop post on it and say say whether or not they found duplicate content on their site. From that point we can see if OP's theory is sound. We need to collect data on this, otherwise it just becomes a screaming contest with one side saying "duplicate content is a myth" and the other side saying "It's totally for real, yo!"

*EDIT*

Here; I started the thread.

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/541261-google-update-duplicate-content.html

fc-dh said:

LOL dup content is defiantly a myth, i have about 200 sites with 200/500 pages with 94% dup content on the same .info domain, the only difference between the content is the city name...

And these sites are getting me leads for my clients every single day for about 2,5 years now, of the 200 sites only 3 got effected by the panda update, changed the content with new content that was 94% the same and after 2 months i had 90% of my listings back.

So i don't know about your site and what the problem was, but i am certain that it had nothing to do with a piece of dup content that you had to "digg" for, I know for a fact that dup content in anyway is a big, huge myth...

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Basically, I agree with you. But to confirm, did you build backlinks to those dup websites?

cocococo said:

Yeah yea, really duplicate content is a myth? hahaha. Let me go eat some popcorn

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I don't really get why you need popcorn, but yes duplicated content is absolutely a myth... My bank account tells me that every single day...

clouds said:

Basically, I agree with you. But to confirm, did you build backlinks to those dup websites?

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Of course i did build backlinks to get ranked for the larger cities, but that was not the issue, mr/mrs Popcorn stated that your sites are getting penalized for dup content on the same domain, i wonder how he explains my success.

I'm not sure if it's best to post in this thread or the new one thats been created but I don't think it has anything to do with duplicate content. This has been in the Google algo for a long time and for a large amount of sites to suddenly be punished just doesn't make sense. My site has been affected and I don't believe I have a load of duplicate content. At least no more than my competitors that are now outranking me.

I found an article suggesting that this recent hit on sites is to do with Google taking down a network called SAPE, apparently this is some kind of link selling platform. You can find the article by Googling "google sape link network". It's the second result with the domain seroundtable.

mikie46 said:

Matt Cutts own website show up as duplicate content using that tool. So this is just a myth and i wouldn't worry too much about it unless you duplicating page for page otherwise move on.
The op lost position for another reason, its wasn't duplicate content.

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benji87 said:

I'm not sure if it's best to post in this thread or the new one thats been created but I don't think it has anything to do with duplicate content. This has been in the Google algo for a long time and for a large amount of sites to suddenly be punished just doesn't make sense. My site has been affected and I don't believe I have a load of duplicate content. At least no more than my competitors that are now outranking me.

I found an article suggesting that this recent hit on sites is to do with Google taking down a network called SAPE, apparently this is some kind of link selling platform. You can find the article by Googling "google sape link network". It's the second result with the domain seroundtable.

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I will say this again, you don't need google updates to happen to lose rankings and if you think you do , then you need to go back to SEO 101, really and you know this for sure that I lost ranking because of another thing and not duplicate content? and why did the site came back after removing the internal duplicate content I got rid of?

I remember when google panda first came out, majority of people vouch about how good their site was, why they didnt deserve to be punished, guess what? after reviewing most of this guy's site, you wonder why they ever got ranked in the first place.

cocococo said:

I will say this again, you don't need google updates to happen to lose rankings and if you think you do , then you need to go back to SEO 101, really and you know this for sure that I lost ranking because of another thing and not duplicate content? and why did the site came back after removing the internal duplicate content I got rid of?

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Did you watch that video about duplicate content posted in this thread? The guy from Google quite clearly goes over this and states that G does not penalize you for it. I watched the while thing which solidified in my mind that this is a big misunderstanding overall about it.

Actually my point of the thread is not about duplicate content, due to my experience and the clients I have done consultation for that blame their previous link building company about their drop in ranking, after doing some deep analysation, you found that majority of the sites are not fit to rank let alone stayed there when there is any google updates.

And this particular site, just happen to have internal duplicate content, and this site has always stayed rank for each updates, until I implement something to the site I shouldn't have, after removing the culprits the rankings return. My point is for website owner to check their site, before blaming Google or their link building company whenever they drop in rankings.

Also have always believe duplicate content was a myth, not until I dealth with over 40 local clients with duplicate content how badly it effected their site, you might be ranking right now with duplicate contents, good for you, but take it from someone who's has experience in dealing with this, and has several clients for the duplicate content case study, not just something I picked out of the blue.

duplicate post

cocococo said:

I will say this again, you don't need google updates to happen to lose rankings and if you think you do , then you need to go back to SEO 101, really and you know this for sure that I lost ranking because of another thing and not duplicate content? and why did the site came back after removing the internal duplicate content I got rid of?

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An I'll say this again too.. No one is arguing that you can not lose rank if there is no update..

I'll say this again.... We are not talking about just 1 personal site here... all major IM and SEO forum are talking about it because there are lots of webmaster affected.

You keep on talking about your site how it is penalized and how it recovered. In your case its more likely there is no update, because by the time you experienced it, no other person is talking about their sites losing their ranking. That is SEO, you rank, you get outranked and when you go overboard you sometimes trigger a penalty for your site alone.

Now... I'll say this again.. There are so many website affected at the same time, and the only explanation for that is, they tweak or update their algorithm thus hitting a lot of websites that the new algo targeted.

Either it's onsite or offsite thing, we can't be sure right now... The only way we can figure it out is to discuss about it and know the common denominator for the sites affected and maybe run some test. It will just a matter of time before we beat it. We always do.

P.S.: When you lose rank without update, the 1st page SERP will not be affected much it would be just you dropping off. if there was an update, you will see 3-5 new site in the first page and most of the time the 1st page result will be shuffled. This is specially true to micro niche where there so many sniper sites and made for adsense sites.

cocococo said:

Actually my point of the thread is not about duplicate content, due to my experience and the clients I have done consultation for that blame their previous link building company about their drop in ranking, after doing some deep analysation, you found that majority of the sites are not fit to rank let alone stayed there when there is any google updates.

And this particular site, just happen to have internal duplicate content, and this site has always stayed rank for each updates, until I implement something to the site I shouldn't have, after removing the culprits the rankings return. My point is for website owner to check their site, before blaming Google or their link building company whenever they drop in rankings.

Also have always believe duplicate content was a myth, not until I dealth with over 40 local clients with duplicate content how badly it effected their site, you might be ranking right now with duplicate contents, good for you, but take it from someone who's has experience in dealing with this, and has several clients for the duplicate content case study, not just something I picked out of the blue.

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Take it from someone who is in the game for more then 10 years, there is NO duplicated content penalty, stop putting bad advice in peoples mind... if what you're saying is true that i would have been blasted out of the index a long time ago.... and because i have a fierce amount of domains that are all perfectly fine after ALL the updates i can say with out a any doubt that the dup content penalty is a myth, probably invented in by people like you to scare people into buying their services.

fc-dh said:

Take it from someone who is in the game for more then 10 years, there is NO duplicated content penalty, stop putting bad advice in peoples mind... if what you're saying is true that i would have been blasted out of the index a long time ago.... and because i have a fierce amount of domains that are all perfectly fine after ALL the updates i can say with out a any doubt that the dup content penalty is a myth, probably invented in by people like you to scare people into buying their services.

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Duplicate penalty or not, I have a client who has multiple page, where his homepage content also same as other page, the site couldnt rank what so ever, nothing you throw at it will make it burge, removing the other page, a week later, this morning this site is in the top 100.

And I didn't create this thread to sell anything to anyone, just to alert people, that most people who complain about Google update affecting their site, it's truly might not be the updates, where as onsite issues. People can believe what they want to believe, But i still stick to my gun.

So you removed some content, the site made it in the top 100 S) and than you concluded it was dup content... am i getting this right?

remove or update internal duplicate pages is the first step toward quality.

No it isn't

Such a waste of my time reading this....It might be better without duplicate content, but saying it ruins everything is just your propaganda.

fc-dh said:

So you removed some content, the site made it in the top 100 S) and than you concluded it was dup content... am i getting this right?

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Yes I concluded it was 100% percent duplicate content with this site, I knew the background of this site, and once all the duplicate content got rid of, it got to top 100

Cloudbacklinks said:

Such a waste of my time reading this....It might be better without duplicate content, but saying it ruins everything is just your propaganda.

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Before butting up on this thread, if you actually read the whole thread you will hear me say time and time again, most people ignore their site and blame the rest on Google update or their link provider.

The reason why I created this thread was because I was reading some BSTs and saw some people claiming their provider ruin their site, they got hit by updates, some of this people seek my service and guess what their site don't even deserve to rank what so ever, hence me creating this thread and alert people that it usually their site if they think they've done the right job with link building, but in my case its was a duplicate content issues. People can take whatever they need to take out of this thread, or soldier on crying about some updates.

cocococo said:

Before butting up on this thread, if you actually read the whole thread you will hear me say time and time again, most people ignore their site and blame the rest on Google update or their link provider.

The reason why I created this thread was because I was reading some BSTs and saw some people claiming their provider ruin their site, they got hit by updates, some of this people seek my service and guess what their site don't even deserve to rank what so ever, hence me creating this thread and alert people that it usually their site if they think they've done the right job with link building, but in my case its was a duplicate content issues. People can take whatever they need to take out of this thread, or soldier on crying about some updates.

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So what do you think happened last march 6?

Do you still believe it was just a bunch of random sites penalized for dup content or other site problem?

You never address my point:

testdrive said:

I'll say this again.... We are not talking about just 1 personal site here... all major IM and SEO forum are talking about it because there are lots of webmaster affected.

Now... I'll say this again.. There are so many website affected at the same time, and the only explanation for that is, they tweak or update their algorithm thus hitting a lot of websites that the new algo targeted.

P.S.: When you lose rank without update, the 1st page SERP will not be affected much it would be just you dropping off. if there was an update, you will see 3-5 new site in the first page and most of the time the 1st page result will be shuffled. This is specially true to micro niche where there so many sniper sites and made for adsense sites.

Click to expand...