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Does Google remember duplicate content?
cosmolito
Posts: 34
Joined: 06 Mar 09
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31 Aug 09 7:41 am

Does Google remember duplicate content?

Hi there,

I have a site where I added duplicate content - long before I knew about duplicate content penalties in the search engines. The site that had duplicate content is "http://www.guitarnexus.net"

My question is:

Will Google or the other top search engines care now? I've since removed the duplicate content. Will I always be seen as that site that had duplicate content even tho now it has been removed and there is unique content?

What I've actually done is considered changing the whole site over to a new domain (very similar - and I hadn't yet really started my full scale marketing yet so I haven't really lost anything as far as that site goes - by the way, the new domain is "http://www.guitarnexus.com").

Would it be better to just change the whole site over to the brand new domain? Or does it matter much? Will google prefer a site that is about a year old even though they know it had duplicate content on it a while ago?

PS - I much prefer my new domain anyway - what are your thoughts and comments?
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faradina
Posts: 1895
Joined: 01 Jun 09
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31 Aug 09 8:33 am

 Search engines store cached versions of your pages and if the cached page contains the duplicate content then it's like the search engines "remembering" the duplicate content. This is a situation in which using the noarchive meta tag would be called for.

To prevent all search engines from showing a "Cached" link for your site, place this tag in the <HEAD> section of your page:

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">

To prevent only Google from displaying one, use the following tag:

<meta name="googlebot" content="noarchive">

To know more about noarchive, you can go to the "A cached page" section of http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156412
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markling
Posts: 2071
Joined: 13 Jun 06
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31 Aug 09 10:04 pm

 Google will index your site from time to time and if you've removed the duplicate content, then the penalties will no longer apply. You can use the Google Webmaster tools site to manage what is being indexed on your site, and even remove URLs fromt he search results.

If you do switch to your new site, remove to do a 301 permanent redirection from your old site so you get the benefits of the site age and any PageRank.
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cosmolito
Posts: 34
Joined: 06 Mar 09
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31 Aug 09 11:00 pm

 Thanks Faradina and Mark :)
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“Online social media is quickly eradicating off page SEO as a viable means of gaining rankings.”
- Charles Heflin (cutting edge SEO expert)
www.cosmokeenan.com/synnd
 

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