Few things human are more fascinating than identical twins.
Think about how many creative works, from classical literature to pop culture, are about twins: The Prince & the Pauper, the myth of Castor & Pollux, the 1960s Patty Duke TV Show, The Parent Trap–the list goes on and on.
When it comes to content on the web, though, identical duplication isn’t quite so entertaining. Duplicate content within the same site can cause problems for search engines trying to decide which page should rank. But duplication can also be painful across different sites if the site that ends up ranking for an important keyword is not the one to which you wanted to drive traffic.
So, can posting your content to Google+ cause a duplicate content problem?
The Concern: Google+ Posts Can Rank on Google
When Google+ was first introduced early adopters like me quickly noticed a powerful phenomenon: Google search indexes public Google+ posts just like web pages, and they can rank for terms found in the posts. The factors that determine which Google+ post(s) will rank for a given term I’ve written about elsewhere.
That means that if the exact same content is published on a website and then reproduced as a publicly-shared Google+ post, that G+ post goes into competition with the site content for keywords relevant to the content.
So maybe it’s safest to never syndicate your content to Google+? No, I am very sure you don’t need to worry about that. Let me explain why.
Why Google+ Posts Do Not Pose a Duplicate Content Threat
First of all, let’s clear something up: there is no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” The only problem with duplicate content is that Google has to decide which copy should rank highest. And that only becomes a problem for you if the ranking copy isn’t the one you want to drive the most traffic to!
Links Help
A way to help Google find the original of syndicated content (which is publishing the same content on other sites, including Google+) is to link to the original. Eric Enge has written about how to safely syndicate your content on multiple sites.
I’ve been assured by Google’s John Mueller that when a Google+ post links to a web page, Google will see the web page as the original. Google will never value a Google+ post over a web page with at least some bit of authority, but not at all if there is a clear link back to the web page.
Google+ Posts Are Relatively SEO Weak
Though Google+ posts can certainly rank in Google search, their strength is relatively weak compared to most regular web sites, even from authoritative Google+ profiles. That is, if Google can find web content that is a good match for the query, they will most often give preference to that over a G+ post.
G+ posts, though, can rank high in search, but in my experience it is only when they are a much better match for the query than any website content.
I have a personal example that illustrates this. For over two years a Google+ post I wrote about “Google+ Page analytics” ranked never lower than #3 in a logged-out search for that phrase.
But then Google+ finally did introduce some analytics for Google+ pages. Immediately dozens of articles about that popped up on regular sites. And just as quickly, my Google+ post disappeared from the top pages of search. It had served its purpose, holding a place for two years as the lone best answer to a query. But when that query became headline news, it couldn’t compete.
Let’s Get Personal
There is one place where Google+ posts can be very strong and rank high frequently: in the logged-in searches of people who follow you on Google+. But even there, if you’ve linked to your original content, you’ve still only put those people one more click away from the original.
In light of the last point, if you’re really concerned that your G+ posts will rob traffic from your website, don’t republish the entire content on G+. Instead, create a “teaser” post that has enough of the content to build interest, then finish with a “read more” link to the full content on your site.
But they’re cousins…
Finally, simply because most of you reading this probably never saw the grooviness that was The Patty Duke Show, and since I mentioned it in my introduction (#showingmyage), I leave you with the theme song. May it become as much an earworm to you as it has been for me for some 50 years now!
Panda could be considered a “duplicate content penalty” if you have an excessive amount of duplicate content. But great info.
But only for duplicate content within a site itself. In this post I’m addressing a concern about duplicate content on different domains. Panda doesn’t address that.
Thanks Mark, this is a timely read for me. I was just wondering this very thing the other day!
That’s a great info Mark!!! We are mostly confused whether Google actually includes signals from Google Plus and content syndication.
What about publishing on LinkedIn… does the same hold true?
Hi Brandon – it is my belief that it does. What Mark has written here should be true of pretty much all social media platforms.
I agree with Eric. To be on the safe side, if you’re completely reproducing your blog content on LinkedIn (or anywhere else) I would always at least include a link back to your original post. (“Originally posted at ____”)
sir how to protect my content fron google duplicate content penalty,, which sites are the share my content for best,please suggest me
Gouse, it’s not a matter of posting to particular sites (although you should care about that for other reasons). For tips on how to syndicate your content on multiple sites without fearing duplicate content problems, see http://searchengineland.com/syndicated-content-189097
Thank you very much sir for rely instantly
Thanks for clearing this up. I’ve always suspected that there was no “duplicate content” penalty between different websites – different story when your own site has the same content on it more than once.
Thank you!
Hey Mark,
Great info on the myth surrounding duplicate content. I have a question though. I’ve seen people creating the same content to be published on all social media sites. Facebook, G+, LinkedIn all share the same status. Does that result in duplicate content issues?
Thanks for your great question, Farah. Only insofar as Google indexes any of that content. If it does index it from more than one social network, then its a matter of the relative authority of each of the posts and/or the profiles from which the content was posted that will determine which of them will rank highest.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for putting together a great article.
I’m using G+ as my main blogging platform and then importing those posts into my WordPress site. This allows me to create great looking content quickly and deliver it to lots of people and the imported content builds into a searchable archive for longer term reference.
Do you think that there are any downside duplicate SEO issues to this method?
Thanks again Alan
Alan, glad you found the post useful. As I state above, I think that depends on what you want to have ranking. If your blog has reasonably good SEO strength, it should easily outrank your Google+ posts in regular search. However, people who have you circled on Google+ may get the G+ post pumped up when they search logged in to Google. That can be an advantage, though, as such posts get special highlighting with your profile image alongside.
My best practice recommendation is that once you post on your blog, go back and edit in a link on the Google+ post to the blog post. You might even want, at that point, to edit the G+ post so it is now just a teaser, with just part of the content, with a “read more” link to your blog.
Thanks for your reply Mark,
Your advice is much appreciated.
I was thinking about posting from the blog a couple of times a week too.
I can then send these posts to G+ to help with even more cross germination.
Thanks again
Alan
You’re welcome, Alan. Let me know how it goes!
Thanks, Mark. I’ve been looking for this information for some time and this is the best explanation of the effect of duplicate content that I’ve run into. Once again, thanks for this coverage.
So glad you found it useful Lindsey!
Absolutely correct. Mark you have simply explained about duplicate content on Social platforms, really thankful to you. So it is safe to share an article to different social sites with same title & meta data?
Do you think that to post the same posts on 2 different Facebook pages is considered duplicated content? What is the same content if published in Twitter, Facebook and Google+?
Hi Jack,
Well, the same content published in more than one place is always “considered duplicate content.” Duplicate content is simply content that is duplicated in more than one place!
Keep in mind my discussion in the post. There is NO such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” It’s just always a question of which copy of duplicated content will rank highest, and which you want to rank highest.
If you don’t care where people see the content, as long as they see it, then duplicate content is a non-issue. (NOTE: We’re talking here about content duplicated on different sites and/or social platforms. Having duplicate content on the same site can be an SEO issue, but that’s not the problem we’re addressing here.)
Once you understand those concepts, then it’s a question of how many versions of the content did Google actually index. In the case of Facebook, Google never indexes everything that appears on Facebook, so it’s possible that the version on one page gets indexed (and shows up in search) but the other doesn’t. If both are indexed, then Google’s normal ranking signals come into play. In the case of a Facebook post, that probably means the search authority that Google has for each page.
Hope that helps; let me know if you still have questions!
Hi Mark,
With your article in mind, is there anything to gain from posting multiple times on the same piece of content on Google+ at all?
It sounds like once the first post is indexed, future posting doesn’t affect anything (in an SEO perspective)?
Hi Joe – that’s right. Subsequent posts will not add additional value.
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