Duplicate content? What duplicate content? And what warning?

Yes duplicate content, you know the one that is the same as another piece of content? And the warning by the gurus that you will be penalised by the search engines. Remember that? They called it “Duplicate content penalty”!

OK OK enough dramatisation here is what am on about. First my theory followed by facts from experts and then the conclusion, and hopefully you will say “oh that duplicate content penalty?” Its a myth!!!

Yes duplicate content penalty is a myth and this ( according to me) is how it all started. I’ll use the example of Guru A and Guru B each with a product and both helping each other to your hard earned cash to line their pockets. In a way “Duplicate content penalty” is a gimmick to make money.

Guru A came up with the idea of selling PLR articles to the masses, effectively selling duplicate content. Guru B ceased up the opportunity to rewrite the content using a piece of software making it somewhat unique – in a way! In order to creat demand and a market for both products both A and B conspired and conjured up this cunning phrase “Duplicate Content Penalty”. And so the hype was born with A and B making lodsa money out of the unsuspecting Joe Bloggers.

Duplicate content is a myth – proof #1

One of the top bloggers on the net Justin Brooke from sitefling.com did a good job on demystifying such preposterous claims. Here’s the video he put out on the topic.

As you can see from the video Justin totally destroyed the ridiculous claims of duplicate content penalty.

Duplicate content is a myth – proof #2

And to back it all up if you still need convincing here is what Google, yes the top search engine Google has to say about duplicate content:

Duplicate content. There’s just something about it. We keep writing about it, and people keep asking about it. In particular, I still hear a lot of webmasters worrying about whether they may have a “duplicate content penalty.”Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

Here is the full article: Demystifying the “duplicate content penalty”

If none of this convince you then nothing ever will. However if you are worried about on-site duplicate content then the above article by Google has links to help you resolve that problem too.