Duplicate content or not? If you're using abstracts from external sources you link to

[romanbond]

I was wondering if a page (a blog post, for example) that offers links to external web pages along with abstracts from these pages would be considered duplicate content page and therefore penalized by Google.

For example, I have a page that has very little original content (just two or three sentences that summarize or sometimes frame the topic) followed by five references to different external sources. Each reference contains a title, which is a link, and a short abstract, which basically is the first few sentences copied from the page it links to.

So, except from a few sentences in the beginning everything is copied from other pages.

Such a page would be very helpful for people interested in the topic as the sources it links to had been analyzed before, handpicked and were placed there to enhance user experience.

But will this format be considered duplicate or near-duplicate content?

[Atomicx]

It would probably be duplicate content. The page would be useful for people who stumble upon your site, but why would Google want to rank that page over the actual sources themselves? So your best bet is to add plenty of your own content to that page, or rank the rest of your site and link to this useful resource (not expecting it to rank on its own).

[MikeGracia]

Hmmm I would say borderline. If this was the mainstay of posts to a site, then I would be worried. However if you have lots of other content published on a regular basis that is content-rich and engaging, then I would be less worried.

If the main goal here really is for users, rather than SERPS, why not noindex, dofollow the page?

Couldn't you twist this a little though, have a unique intro at the start of the article, then a paragraph of your own thoughts on each topic - adding value and provoking thought, then a link to the topic after that? It's what I do on some of my sites, and it works well!

[Chris.Menke]

Romanbond,

This is thin content/Panda kind of stuff. If your users find it valuable and outside sources link to your abstract pages, it could pass muster.  It's likely though, that those pages will not build up the authority that they need to either rank well themselves or pass along link equity to those pages they link to.

[Carson-Ward]

Are you going to get some sort of penalty for it? No. Duplicate content doesn't work that way unless you're just a low-quality or scraper site. Are you going to rank for a lot of keywords in the quoted text? No, probably not.

If there's value in your curation, you could in theory rank for the theme or topic that you're covering with the external quotations. This is especially true if you're pulling together hard-to-find or obscure quotations together, or combining them in an interesting/unique way.

Providing unique content is generally a good way to go in organic search, but there are plenty of aggregation sites succeeding. This was all MetaCritic had before it filled up with user reviews, but it was insanely useful. Don't let anyone tell you that content will get you penalized or something just because it can be found elsewhere. Do cite your sources and think about user comments. If you provide something uniquely valuable to the user, there are ways to make even pure duplicate content work in search.