What is website duplicate
content?
Duplicate content refers to large sections of content
within or across domains that are identical or are remarkably
similar.
The search engines recognise that usually it is unintentional and not malicious black hat SEO.
Search engines may take exception if there is website content
duplication between domains with the objective of
manipulating search engine rankings and there is a
danger of a penalty and perhaps seeing your site removed
from the search engine index..
Searchers want to
see unique content options. They do not wish to be
troubled by repetition.
The search
engines, ever mindful of the welfare of their searchers
(rather than their own financial rewards)
endeavour to index and show pages with unique
information. According to
Google "In the rare cases in which we
perceive that duplicate content may be shown with intent
to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll
also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and
ranking of the sites involved. However, we prefer to
focus on filtering rather than ranking adjustments ...
so in the vast majority of cases, the worst thing
that'll befall webmasters is to see the "less desired"
version of a page shown in our index."
For many of us web designers, the information from Google is
reassuring. We cannot expect visitors to follow every link
within our site to gain all the information that is available.
There are many occasions when we find that copying and pasting a
paragraph from one page onto another will save visitors
diverting from the page which initially attracted them.