Duplicate Content

[Kdruckenbrod]

I was just using a program (copyscpape) to see if the content on a clients website has been copied. I was surprised that the content on the site was displaying 70% duplicated and it's showing the same content on a few sites with different % duplicated (ranging from 35%-80%) I have been informed that the content on the clients site is original and was written by the client.

My question is, does Google know or understand that the clients website's content was created as original and that the other sites have copied it word-for-word and placed it on their site?

Does he need to re-write the content to make it original? I just want to make sure before I told him to re-write all the content on the site? I'm well aware that duplicate content is bad, but i'm just curious if it's hurting the clients site because they originally created the content.

Thanks for your input.

[Chris.Menke]

Take a few 10-word samples of the duplicated content and do a search for them in quotation marks.  If your client's site shows up as the first result, you're in good shape.  If it doesn't , strongly consider re-writing.  Google does it's best to determine and rank the original source of content but, often, it gets it wrong and when that's the case, there isn't too much you can do about it other than building the authority/pagerank of the page from which the content was duplicated.

[David-Kley]

There is a way you can report the offending sites to Google if you can prove your content was created first.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en

If you are using a CMS, check the publish dates of the articles.

Like it has already been stated, do a search for some of the content by doing a search in Google for a section of content, surrounded by quotation marks. This tells Google to search for something exactly as it is entered, and return exact, not relevant results. If you see exact phrases that are duplicated word for word, you could contact either the site owner, or look up who hosts the site in Whois, and contact the hosting provider.

[Kdruckenbrod]

Thank you for the responses. They were both very helpful.  I went ahead and took a few 10-word samples and searched it in Google with the quotation marks. The client showed up as the first result! He was pleased. Again, the responses were very helpful! Thanks.

I like that tips about using the quotations.

[Kingof5]

It's absolutely ridiculous that our industry lays down and accepts stuff like this from Google. It is unacceptable for them to not be able to determine who originally created the content. They have the data to do it.