There is no such thing as duplicate content period. You can post as many times as you want its up to Google to decide what it does with it like you said.

I just wanted to hopefully clear up what that meant from Google. When people try to clear up canonical issues in SEO terms they are trying to condense page rank. Often CMS sites such as Joomla actually have more than one home page, sometimes 2-3 depending on how it is structured. Instead of using a 301 you could use this tool and condense your site into 1 page for your home page instead of spreading the page rank to all 3. Its not that people are worried about duplicating content they just want to make sure that Google knows they only have 1 home page. The same goes for other pages as well. I have 301 redirects from my www.mysite.com/home to www.mysite.com etc.

This wouldnt work for AR blogs as the situation isnt the URLS its just posting content to more than one place which will never hurt you and only help you.

Google has written extensively on duplicate content. There is absolutely no penalty for it if that clarifies what I was trying to say. You can write the same post over and over until you are blue in the face and you are not going to be penalized for it (unless it somehow gets into the realm of spam but within reason I am saying)

What Google does is index the first post it comes across. This is generally what is shown in the SERPS. If Google comes across another post with the same exact content it will index that post as well but it will probably not be shown in results. There are a few different ways to classify this some call it a secondary index or supplementary index or supplementary results. These results tend not to show up in a search but they are still there. But I can say for an absolute fact that Google does not always limit blog posts to one search result. I often have my posts show up multiple times in search results. Not to mention you get far greater exposure by posting your blog in more than one place. So from my point of view you are just limiting yourself by not putting yourself out there in more than one spot.

What Google is trying to clear up is talking about duplicate content but in a different way and definitely not saying you are going to be penalized but its probably not what you want or intended when you designed the site. If you have a website and you have 3 pages with the same content go to the above section and apply that and then you can see the problem. Would you want your website to have pages that may or may not show up in results? NO! That would be terrible. But if it's a blog post who cares which one(s) show up but with a website that could be devastating. That's why to specify what pages you want Google to show you can either use a 301 redirect or you can use this new standard.

It also, as I said in my other comment, works to condense page rank. If you have 3 home pages and Google shows them as a PR3 in the toolbar for each page then you are completely wasting PR and spreading it thinly over pages that you might not even know you have or definitely do not want. This problem is exacerbated by CMS solutions because they often form a URL with rather nasty names like www.sitename.co.uk/pagename/sub%20categoryname Would you want that for your home page? Well for SEO many tools evolved to make more SEO friendly urls. But since your CMS is still churning out the original URL Google often stumbles across both and gets confused. Then it basically tries it best to show to the end user what it thinks is the most appropriate URL but it often gets this wrong. That's why webmasters commonly use the 301 redirect to permanently tell Google where to go (IE no more confusion) This new tool is just an easier or different way of doing the same thing. It has really nothing to do with duplicate content per se in relation to blog posting. It is only talking about canonical URLS.

Duplicate content is one of the biggest "myths" and probably the most commonly misunderstood aspect of SEO.

Yes there is duplicate content. Of course there is. There has to be. There is tons and tons of it but in relation to a penalty there is none. There is a big difference between duplicate content on a website vs duplicating content in blog posts which is what I hope I cleared up. But this new standard has nothing to do with blog posts. This is only to clear up URLS like I said above.

What Bill and I are saying is that you dont have to worry about duplicate content in any way shape or form unless you are purposely and maliciously trying to spam the internet with content and then yes of course you should worry because you are a spammer. But bloggers dont have to worry about a thing. This is really only confusing the issue because this standard is only about URLS. I think the post should be amended because the last part about Active Rain is only confusing people. This has nothing to do with blogging at all. This will also not clean up the web or do anything with how the web looks or remove pages or do anything like that. It only makes it easier for Google and users to be able to find your site. I am not trying to tell you what to do but this is obviously causing some very big confusion. Every time we talk about duplicate content people walk away worried and scared that somehow their site is going to be wiped off the face of the internet for putting an article in more than one place.

There is always going to be duplicate content and as a blogger you will never have to worry about it period. You want duplicate content. That is the whole point of syndication. Thats the whole point of reblogging. This is how news articles spread around the internet. This is one of the great ways link building works. If you write a post about your home town put it anywhere you want! Its your article. Put it on your website. Put it on your blog here and put it in Localism. Put it on your outside blog too! Its your content put it where your readers are (They are everywhere!)