Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Articles
Learn from SEO experts to become an expert. Click here to SEO knowledge Galore.

Concept of a Duplicate Content Filter

Writing articles or content pages for your website to prove that your site has the authority on that particular theme is the target of all the online business owners. If the article directories provide a link to your keyword rich and relevant content then the incoming links are able to prove to the search engines that you have the authority on the theme. But a question comes into the mind, is the content original or duplicate? If a duplicate content is published, what will happen? This article will help you to understand how duplicate content filters work and how you can avoid your website from being ranked low by the search engines.

How Does a Duplicate Content Filter Work

Search engines have a tool, popularly known as crawler which helps on determining the duplicate contents that are published. Crawlers are software and work just like pipe filters that help to eliminate articles or suspected copied pages. Crawlers find out, if the content is copied or not and once the page is marked, the crawler places it in a queue. The indexing process begins and the content has to undergo some algorithms and calculations. If the content is a duplicate one then it will be automatically removed and the page rank will simply reduce. This entire process helps the search engines to remove the scrap content and provide the searchers more relevant information.

Various data mining algorithms are there to identify similar text passages. One of them used by popular search engines is w –shingling. Each content page has a unique fingerprint or blocks of text. Rules that are based on union and intersection are used to determine the resemblance of two documents and is expected that the duplicate content filter is able to find out the original source and accordingly rank it. Search engines usually look down upon the act of copying and penalize the ranking of those websites displaying identical content.

How Can You Avoid the Duplicate Content Filter

To prove that your website contains unique and original content to the search engines, you can use tools that are available for checking. Among the few, copyscape is quite popular. You can type the URL of your webpage and find if there are any replicas on the internet. This will not only help you to maintain your authenticity but will also find out if there are any unauthorized borrowers of your content. Search engines use link popularity to verify the most significant result and by using such tools one may be able to handle the content in a better manner. Simple Page checker is also a great method of finding ways to change the content so that it maintains its originality and creativity.

Summary:
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization ranking, duplicate content plays havoc and webmasters are trying their best to avoid the penalties. By the word penalty it is meant that the ranking of the site will be downgraded. It is better to be original rather than to fall prey to the filters used by the search engines.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

If you want to leave a feedback to this post or to some other user´s comment, simply fill out the form below.

(required)

(required)