Could duplicate (copied) content actually hurt a domain?

[Enrico_Cassinelli]

Hi

I run a small wordpress multisite network where the main site which is an informative portal about the Langhe region in Italy, and the subsites are websites of small local companies in the tourism and wine/food niche.

As an additional service for those who build a website with us, I was thinking about giving them the possibility to use some ouf our portal's content (such as sights, events etc) on their website, in an automatic way.

Not as an "SEO" plus, but more as a service for their current users/visitors base: so if you have a B&B you can have on your site an "events" section with curated content, or a section about thing to see (monuments, parks, museums, etc) in that area, so that your visitors can enjoy reading some content about the territory.

I was wondering if, apart from NOT being benefical, it would be BAD from an SEO point of view... ie: if they could be actually penlized by google.

Thanks

Best

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Many digital marketers talk about a duplicate content penalty – but it's actually not a penalty. Google rewards unique content, it doesn't penalize duplicate content.

If you are planning to create new sections on your site with content that you already had. You don't have anything to worry as long you present that content in a way that helps users.

Let me give you a basic example let assume that you have 30 hotels websites for a specific area. I good way to promote content is to create a list of the best 10 hotels, the best things to do the best restaurants.

Probably you know what is TripAdvisor well TripAdvisor is just is a huge database of hotels, restaurant and business related to the tourism. They dynamically create content based on the user reviews. Such as the best thing to do, the best hotels in a specific area, cheap hotels and so on.

In that way, they create useful content based on the content that already have