Importance of Unique Content Location in Source Code

[khi5]

How much does Google value placement of unique content in the source code vs where it is visually displayed? I have a case where my unqiue content visually displays high on page for the user, but in the source code the unique quality content is below duplicate type content that appear across many other domains (think e-commerce category thumbs on left side of screen and 80% right side of screen unique stuff).

I have the impression I am at a disadvantage because these pages have the unique / quality content lower in source code. Any thoughts on this?

[ecommercebc]

Unfortunately, this issue has been up for debate over the past few years and there's no clear-cut answer. You might like to take a look at this staff-endorsed answer from 2012, which indicated that Google will look at how much unique content is above the fold. If your content is buried deep in the source code and duplicate copy comes first, then this _could _be an issue.

If you can place your unique content higher up within the source code, then this wouldn't be a bad thing, but I have suspicion that chances are there's always more pressing things to optimise.

Sorry there's no '100% yes!' on this, but IMO this has always been one of the vaguest areas of SEO; especially as we know G has become more adept at crawling in the past few years (javascript support, etc).