Google Can't Track Original Content

**csmlola** · 05-26-2006, 02:52 PM

This is just a hearsay. Unfortunately, this is probably true. With all the things Google take in consider (i.e. backlinks, good links, and etc), it is unfortunate that content is not one of them. It is pretty lame if someone you just copied content gets better SERP than the one who made the original content.

**Bruno** · 05-27-2006, 03:42 AM

if i did understand right

G don't know what is original or quality content, thats why he use factors for rankings.

**sprouty** · 06-03-2006, 02:22 PM

Originally Posted by csmlola

This is just a hearsay. Unfortunately, this is probably true. With all the things Google take in consider (i.e. backlinks, good links, and etc), it is unfortunate that content is not one of them. It is pretty lame if someone you just copied content gets better SERP than the one who made the original content.

Yes, I think you're probably right - lame is not a bad word to use in the circumstances that you describe.

I imagine that Google are working on the problem - I have this vision of a whole floor of the g-thingy crammed with young scientists typeing so quickly that they have seconds to replace their keyboards several times a day - they're all working on the "who published this first" algo - it's a toughy too - they'd need to trust their own database to find that information... but can they? Should they?

How glad I am not to be wearing their welly boots on this one - the cost of staffing such a project must be quite staggering, not to mention the responsibility should they choose a solution...

I need some sprout tea...

it's all too much for me...

Sprout Tea
x

**St0n3y** · 06-07-2006, 10:02 AM

The problem is that even if Google was able to determine which site originated the content it's still only a best guess. I can't see anyway to determine that with any certainty other than relying on "we found it here first". Actually, what they found first wouldn't even work, they would have to rely on determining which was published first.

But... if it could happen, it would be nice if ALL links pointing TO the duplicate counted actually counted as links towards the original, while all links IN the duplicate content counted as individual links to those sites. The best of both!

**sprouty** · 06-07-2006, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by St0n3y

The problem is that even if Google was able to determine which site originated the content it's still only a best guess. I can't see anyway to determine that with any certainty other than relying on "we found it here first". Actually, what they found first wouldn't even work, they would have to rely on determining which was published first.

But... if it could happen, it would be nice if ALL links pointing TO the duplicate counted actually counted as links towards the original, while all links IN the duplicate content counted as individual links to those sites. The best of both!

Provided they could determine which was the duplicate content, right?

Simple...

They have to do something and they're dong what they can - I assume...

Maybe they choose one example of any given content as the originator and then penalise the others - until the others complain. Then they change their minds and move the penalties around a little?

They certainly seem to be doing some work on this - I got penalised for republishing an article I wrote myself on another site which was then quoted on a site beloved of certain people. My version was not acceptable, so I deleted it and told people it was a made up story...

It's not easy to handle when it's an establishment such as Google that says you're not the originator of your own material, but it's even worse when people you used to respect use this knowledge to their advantage.

Thos are the untrustworthy ones!

ho hum...

Me
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**Pictographer** · 06-08-2006, 02:35 PM

One solution to this would be a trusted third party notarization service. Before posting an article, you'd digitally sign it and then get a well-known trusted third party to add a timestamp and digital signature to the article. Search engines could check the notary's signature and use the timestamp to determine which of many duplicates was signed first.

If you search for digital notary, you'll find a few organizations that do this.

**krumel** · 07-08-2006, 04:33 AM

Originally Posted by Franks74

What the heck is original content and how will google track it?

Maybe this will help:
March 31st Search Engine Patent- Google Patent Summary > tg9.net/

Document Inception Date

The search engine will learn the creation date of a document through crawling the document, submission of the document or when they first discover a link. Other techniques to determine the age of a document might be to look at the time stamp on the server or viewing the date that a domain was registered when the document was created. They will use this ‘inception date’ to score the document accordingly. Older documents should have a large number of back links while newer documents should have fewer. If a newer document has a spiky rate of growth in the number of back links then this may be seen as trying to SPAM the search engine and the score of the document might actually be lowered. In addition , The search engine “may determine the age of each of the documents in a results set, determine the average age of the documents, and modify the scores of the documents based on a difference between the document’s age and the average age”

Content Updates/Changes

A document that is updated frequently will be scored differently than a document whose content remains static over time. The more updated content, the more ‘different’ your score will be. The search engine will also look at the number of new or unique pages associated with the document over a period of time, versus the number of total pages associated with the document. In some cases “signature” of documents are stored to detect changes in content over time. In other cases the full documents may be stored. The search engine may “determine a date when the content of each of the documents in a result set last changed, determine the average date of change for the documents, and modify the scores of the documents based on a difference between the documents’ date-of-change and the average date-of-change.

But I can`t tell if it`s true...

**xeno439** · 07-09-2006, 04:53 PM

I think the last update geared itself to rewarding original content. One of my sites is very unique and niche and got a 5 with almost no backlinks. Another site dropped in PR after I spent tons on links.