Understanding Duplicate Content Filter
Posted July 16, 2010 – 6:53 am in: SEO
The search engines have started to use duplicate content filters and they have been doing cleaning of the web of late. Imposters and those who made duplicate websites with identical content are a worried lot these days, as these filters sieve these websites and they are virtually out of the business. This article is intended to make you aware of the perils of duplicate content, and how to avoid it so that you are not caught by these filters. This will also enlighten you on how you can check if there is any duplicate content on your website, and what steps to take if indeed there is duplicity.
Search engines are doing it in the interest of the net users. They want the content to be clean and relevant to the users. They want to delete the spam, if any on the net. However, because of the imposters, sometimes even good content sites also get deleted, and this is the unfortunate part of the story. In order to be on the safe side, you must first understand how this filter works.
There are many types of duplicate content that get filtered
Sites with identical content: If there are identical pages in your and any other site, your site gets filtered. This spells trouble for the affiliate sites, which contain much material that is almost similar to the parent site.
Scraped content: If you take content from a website, reword it and then try to use it, it is taken as scrap. Actually, it is nothing more than duplicate content. As there are many blogs with similar material, scraping is now a major headache for search engines.
Product details on E- commerce sites: There are many, hundreds of sites selling products. These products being identical, their specifications are also identical. This duplicate material, though genuine, gets deleted by the filters which is a problem.
Same article on many sites: Suppose you have sold an article to a site, and it gets copied and appears on other websites as well, then it is deemed to be duplicate content and gets sieved by the filters.
There are ways to avoid being caught by these filters. There are tools, like our Similar Page Checker, which catch similar pages. Just feed the two URL’s and our software will find the similarity, if any.
If you have doubts that your content has been copied by others. You can use www.copyscape.com. If you enter your URL, in this software, it will find out if that content is there on the net or not. Thus you can create unique content.
Position in location specific search engines
Posted July 6, 2010 – 6:51 am in: SEO
When we talk of SEO, the location of the search engine is extremely important. It is not only the keywords and the relevant sites that a search engine is interested in, it also does the search with respect to the location of the user and sieves the result based upon this information. A French speaking man may type the keywords in English, but the search engine returns the top results depending upon the IP address of the user and this is how the results contain all French websites pertaining to the keywords. So the goal of a search engine is not limited to find the websites that contain the keywords and the relevant information, but also to bring those sites which are closer to the user in terms of his location.
If you find that despite your best efforts, your site is not doing well in terms of listings in some search engines, the fault lies in the selection of server of your web hosting company. If it is located in Japan, you can certainly not expect your site to be displayed in the user’s web browser even if your site has the exact key words and also the information the user wants.
Search engines, including Google, determine the location of a user on the basis of the IP address and the domain name such as .com.uk or .com.au. This info is fed in all search engines which enables them to come up with results closer to the user’s home country. If you have got your business in the US and you wish to invite users in the US to visit your website, then it’s no use to have you website hosted by a server in Russia or Asia. You may have to switch to a web hosting company which has its server located in the US if you want your website to be displayed in the top results if searched by a user in the US.
There is a special tool called the Website to Country Tool . This tool allows you to check which country your website is being hosted. You can always use this tool to find out why your website is not doing well despite all the SEO content. When you use this tool and come to know that your website is being hosted by a server in a continent where a language other than English is spoken, you are obviously disappointed but you can certainly ask your web hosting company to put it to any other server located in the country where you want it to be.
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