PR / News stories across multiple sites - is it still duplicate content?

[Brabian]

I was wondering does Google make an exception for news stories where duplicate content is concerned? After all depending on the story there can be a lot of quotes and bulk blocks of the same details. Is Google intelligent enough to distinguish between general website content and actual news stories?

Also like a lot of big firms we publish news stories on our website, but then they get passed on to other websites in the form of PR, and then published on other websites. So if we put it on our website, then within a few hours or the same day other websites publish the story at the same time (literally copied and pasted) - how does this affect our website in terms of duplicate content? Will Google know automatically that we published it first?

Thanks!

[masonrj]

Hey,

I come from a newspaper background and still design and run several major newspaper websites, and Google does treat these as duplicate content.  That's why AP news stories don't generate much if any organic web traffic. Same applies with the press releases.

Most publications will rewrite bulk content to make it unique, therefor everything is original.  Many papers I work with will publish an AP story as it breaks and update the story with a unique version as soon as possible.

Side note is that Google tends to crawl and update news sites more often than other sites, so it does not take long for the content to be indexed.

Hope that helps

[Brabian]

Thanks Richard!

If the other websites dont make any effort to change the copy at all and its literally word for word, will that harm our page? I mean will Google be able to tell we posted it first even if it is only an hour or so before they post it?