Copied Content and Other No-No's

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So, as you may remember, we are discussing sites which are given the lowest possible rating by Google's team of evaluators. This would imply they have no chance of ranking highly. Today, we are looking at the actual content on the site. Five categories are considered, which are as follows.

  • No or little main content
  • Lowest quality main content
  • Copied main content
  • Auto-generated main content
  • Obstructed or inaccessible main content

Now, lets take a look at each in turn

No or little main content; pages exist to share their main content with users. The following pages should be rated lowest because they fail to achieve their purpose:

● Pages with no main content
● Pages with a bare minimum of main content that is unhelpful for the purpose of the page

Lowest quality main content; the lowest rating applies to any page with lowest quality main content. Lowest quality main content is content created with such insufficient time, effort, expertise, talent, and/or skill that it fails to achieve its purpose. The lowest rating should also
apply to pages where users cannot benefit from the main content, for example:

● Informational pages with demonstrably inaccurate main content
● The main content is so difficult to read, watch, or use, that it takes great effort to understand and use the page
● Broken functionality of the page due to lack of skill in construction, poor design, or lack of maintenance

Copied main content; one way to create main content with little to no time, effort, or expertise is to copy it from another source.The word “copied” refers to the practice of “scraping” content, or copying content from other non-affiliated websites without adding any original content or value to users. Important: We do not consider legitimately licensed or syndicated content to be “copied” Examples of syndicated content in the US include news articles by AP or Reuters.
The lowest rating is appropriate if all or almost all of the main content on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise,manual curation, or added value for users. Such pages should be rated lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source. All of the following are considered copied content:

● Content copied exactly from an identifiable source. Sometimes an entire page is copied, and sometimes just parts of the page are copied. Sometimes multiple pages are copied and then pasted together into a single page. Text that has been copied exactly is usually the easiest type of copied content to identify
● Content that is copied, but changed slightly from the original. This type of copying makes it difficult to find the exact matching original source. Sometimes just a few words are changed, or whole sentences are changed, or a “find and replace” modification is made, where one word is replaced with another throughout the text. These types of changes are deliberately done to make it difficult to find the original source of the content. We call this kind of content “copied with minimal alteration”
● Content copied from a changing source, such as a search results page or news feed. You often will not be able to find an exact matching original source if it is a copy of “dynamic” content (content that changes frequently). However, we will still consider this to be copied content

Auto-generated main content; another way to create main content with little to no time, effort, or expertise is to create pages (or even entire websites) by designing a basic template from which hundreds or thousands of pages are created, sometimes using content from freely
available sources (such as an RSS feed or API). These pages are created with no or very little time, effort, or expertise, and also have no editing or manual curation. Pages and websites made up of auto-generated content with no editing or manual curation, and no original content or value added for users, should be rated lowest

Obstructed or inaccessible main content; main content cannot be used if it is obstructed or inaccessible due to Ads, supplementary content, or interstitial* pages. If you are not able to access the main content, please use the lowest rating. Here are some examples of pages with obstructed main content that should be rated lowest:

● Ads that continue to cover the main content as you scroll down the page, that are virtually impossible to close without clicking on the Ad.
● An interstitial* page that redirects the user away from the main content without offering any path back to the main content

* On the web, interstitials are web pages displayed before or after an expected content page, often to display advertisements or confirm the user's age.

So, quite a lot to take in there. Categories one and two are fairly self-explanatory - no content, inaccurate content, broken pages

Category three relating to copied content is quite interesting. Note this phrase in particular "Such pages should be rated lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source."

Whew, that was heavy going! I will try and find a lighter subject for tomorrow, to give your brains a rest!










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Recent Comments

30

Great information Diane. Thanks for a good job.
Joe

Pertaining to category three, are we to take from their recommendation that there would be a threshold for 'copied content' maybe as a percentage of the whole article, I wonder. Another valuable insight, thank you.

Hello everyone I feel we should all be original thinking things through doing research and creating your own content I know it may seem hard but I'm sure with the training here we can do it. Happy writing.

Hi Diane. Really important advice. Thank you for going through the manual to provide such a useful summary. Too many people think they can get ranked in Google the quick and lazy way by using other people’s content. Hopefully nobody here would think of doing that! All the best

Excellent article, Diane, and a very important topic. As you point out, there is a HUGE difference between using other's content for research or inspiration and just flat out copying it. Fortunately, I think Google gets better every month at rooting out such actions. Thanks for sharing :-)

I guess the lowest possible ranking means you don't get ranked at all? Or does it mean you get ranked on the last page on Google search results? But even that is better than not getting ranked at all, right? So, which one do you mean by the lowest possible ranking?

Hi - this is not my personal opinion on the subject. I am simply summarizing and quoting from Google's manual (166 pages) given to its quality rating evaluators.

Unfortunately, it doesn't clarify as to what happens to the websites given the lowest rating, but note their wording; "rating" not "ranking". It would imply that they are not the same thing.

OK, thanks for clarifying. Then we won´t know what happens to the lowest rated posts, are they ranked on the last page or left outside ranking altogether.

Good afternoon, outstanding information, however it would give sadness to my heart to think with all the training that we receive here at wa that someone would even need to think of the possibility of copying someone else's content. That is Ludacris, may you have a very blessed Sunday.

Very informational. Thanks

No! Don't choose a lighter topic as this is the type of information we need! EXCELLENT write up and everybody needs to be aware of this. I'm so tired of "fluff". This is absolutely PERFECT!!!

Learning so much from you Diane! Thank you for sharing!

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