Duplicate Content & www.3quarksdaily.com, why no penalty?

[KMack]

Does anyone have a theory as to why this site does not get hit with a DC penalty?

The site is great, and the information is good but I just cannot understand the reason that this site does not get hit with a duplicate content penalty as all articles are posted elsewhere.

Any theories would be greatly appreciated!

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Kevin,

before entering into your question, it is better to precise that duplicated content is not cause of penalty. We talk about it in "penalization" terms because Google tends to filter pages with duplicated content, if they are in the same site and because duplicated content waste the so called budget crawl. But when it comes to content duplicated in several sites, then we don't have a rule, even though the scraper update was meant to give an order to this kind of situation.

In the case of 3quarksdaily.com, you have to notice:

1. it is a clearly stated curation content website (see http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/aboutus.html )
2. it references the original source correctly with an attribution link in the author name

The same could be said about http://www.thenewdawnliberia.com site, an online newspaper, that published too the same article here.

Personally, I don't think that this kind of content syndication  has to be penalized.

But the most important thing to notice is that is the original source that doesn't rank first (it is 4th) for that same query! If i was its SEO I would start investigating why.

[KMack]

Thank you for taking the time to respond, and with such well thought out answer.

I suppose the original author would not be so bothered about 3 Quarks Daily as at least they link to & request readers to visit the original site for the full article, which is obviously more than The New Dawn Liberia Site.

Do you feel that creating such a site (3 Quarks Daily) as a readers resource of the best articles on a specific topic from across the web is a legitimate way to build a website (for personal pleasure not profit)? and what are your thoughts on copyright issues?

How would you feel if others re-posted your content in this way?

It is interesting that Google does not penalize duplicate content websites, and in this specific example surprising that those re-posting others content can rank higher.

(sorry for asking so many questions)