The TRUTH about Google Dublicate Content Penalty

Webmasters worry a lot about duplicate content, the fear of Google penalties seems to be a never ending discussion and all kinds of techniques are used to avoid this. Google recently published an article about this hoping to clarify their policy and put and end to the discussion.

The article "Demystifying the duplicate content penalty" by Susan Moskwa, states that Google don't penalize duplicate content the way people think they are. The article actually confirms what most of us already know from the Webmaster Guidelines; Google fancy uniqueness and its unwise to scrape content and republish it on your web site. But, if you add some value like rewriting it, or add something "new and valuable" to the text content - then its accepted. Below are a few more "rules" you should keep in mind:

Do not create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with similar or duplicate content - guess this is pretty obvious to everyone.

Avoid cookie cutter approaches like affiliate programs with little or no original content Meaning. the same web site is found "all over" the net and your site don't represent any value to the users -watch out for turn key solutions.

Make sure your web site provides relevant and valuable content if you participate in an affiliate program. There is nothing wrong with affiliate links on your web pages as long as the content is unique and adds value.

Generally Google tolerates pretty much before penalizing a site or web page as long as its not designed to mislead users or manipulate the search engines. But be aware of that duplication might weaken the strength of an URL or Web site.

When Google discover duplicate content generated by default by CMS, Google put these pages in a cluster and pick out the URL they find most relevant and consolidate this URL using for instance Pagerank. This "cluster URL" will be shown in the Search Engine results page (SERP).

Susan Moskwas distinct article clarifies many of the frequent questions Webmasters have about duplicate content. We encourage you to read it carefully and follow the links in the article for more in depth info - you find it at Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Source: Google Webmaster Central - kindly provided by Article Promotion Journal

Flash based web site - the good and bad

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here's a simple breakdown.

The good and useful

Flash's Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

Cross browser compatibility standard

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Interactive communication with animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and ugly things

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You'll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed.

Website optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

Tony SEO Facility Web Design & Development