Orginal Content Vs. Duplicate Content On Real Estate Websites

The Debate:

Search engine optimization purists contend that search engines penalize your site for having duplicate content. The less fanatical claim that many a real estate webmaster is over worried about duplicate content penalties that will simply fail to materialize.

The Cases:

The argument against using duplicate content is straightforward. If search engines are in the business of providing the most relevant and important information to their search clients then having the same content on your site that is found elsewhere on the internet, simply defeats that purpose. Further impact, they claim comes from the constantly evolving process search engines use for organizing the sites they crawl. As the need for more accurate listings increase, and the technology to sort sites gets better, then sites with duplicate content will fall in favor of those with original content. It is not simply enough to have same real estate article that every one else has.

The argument for the use of duplicate content, is not really an argument for duplicate content. It is more of an argument toward understanding the reality of search engines. There are a many aspects of websites that could (and are) duplicate content. For example, forms, contact sheets, html header information etc. all show up with astounding frequency on the internet. There are a lot of really smart, mathy people who do nothing but figure out how to get around these issues. So while Google and other search engines will favour sites that offer up original content, they will not penalize you for having some duplicate content.

Proof:

For the against side, this is a tough one. Because no one is really sure how search engines do what they do, it is really impossible to flag duplicate content as the sole reason for any particular drop in search engine ranking. Moreover, if you look at most of the research online about duplicate content, it references the potential harm and not the root issue. In other words, there is very little substantive proof about duplicate content penalties out there other then the fear that there may be one. That is not to say that this fear is not grounded on solid thinking, just that unlike some more prevalent issues such as making links the same color as the background.

Those that feel duplicate content is not as big an issue as the fear is making out to be have good reason and much more proof. There are countless examples, blog posts and case studies which not only defeat the notion of duplicate content penalization, but highlight how much fear drives search engine optimization. A great post which clearly outlines Googles stance on this can be found here: Googles Official News On Search Engine Crawling. While there is clear evidence that copying a site page for page will not get you very far, there is more evidence to suggest the primary motivation behind the duplicate content penalty is fear and not proof.

The Verdict:

So where does that leave us? Well, when I first started hearing about duplicate content and the potential penalties, it made alot of sense to me. While trying to think like a search engine I could see how having duplicate content should carry some detractor when sorting search engine results. Having done a fair amount of digging around on this issue, the there it is clear that while this position is logical, it is somewhat unfounded at this time. The key here being at this time. My verdict is pretty simple. Original content wins hands down every time. There may not be a penalty for duplicate content, but there is certainly not much of a reward either. Baring that in mind, as search engines do get better at what they do and as more sites arrive to be indexed, I think duplicate content could become an issue in the future. The bottom line? If you need content for your site, use what you can. Ideally however, you want content that pertains exactly to your site, that is optimized for your site, that has all the clout it can muster to make propel your site up the search engine rankings.