This article is about a very common piece of misinformation, that one can often encounter in online marketing forums. Part of the blame for this misinformation falls to article spinning programs and the way they are being advertised.

As you may have guessed, I am referring to the so-called duplicate-content-penalty. Allegedly, Google doesn’t like multiple copies of the same content to be spread out all across the web or across several pages of the same site. Rumour has it that once Google find such dupliacte copies some kind of a penalty is applied. Even though this penalty is mentioned very often, it’s very difficult to find any kind of description of what this penalty does, exactly and who it applies to.

Of course, it’s all just a myth. And it can be easily disproved. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Press Releases:

Any time something important happens and the press release is published, the story gets republished by many news sites, large and small. Typically, the same news item will also be picked up by many related blogs. In most cases, some or all of the original text of the initial press release is republished. It’s clear to see that Google doesn’t care about duplicate-content in these cases, as news sites and blogs are not penalized.

Song-Texts:

How many sites exist, that let you look up the lyrics to your favourite songs? And how often are famous song lyrics quoted on websites and discussed in forums? In every instance, the song-texts are unchanged and identical, in other words: duplicates. Once again, song lyric sites and music forums are not being punished by Google.

Viral Content And Memes:

Viral content and memes are a huge part of the Internet and whenever a joke or video or motivational quote catches on, it can get published tens of thousands of times, all across the web. Again, a clear example of duplicate content and no punishment in sight.

In the face of such evidence, how come the duplicate-content-penalty myth prevails?

The Misinterpretation:

One problem is that if you search for a piece of content that as many duplicates, the standard Google search results will only display one or two instances of this content. However, you can select an option in order to see all of the duplicates listed. The reason for the omission of some duplicates from the search results is that Google strives to display diverse and relevant results. Displaying dozens or hundreds of duplicate entries would not be very useful for the person doing the search. However, the sites that are not being listed are still indexed by Google and links from those sites still “count”, so there is no actual penalty in play.

The problem is that it’s in the interest of many producers of article spinning tools to keep the duplicate content myth alive. Fear sells and if you believe that you must spin and rewrite any content you want to distribute or suffer punishment from the big G, you are more likely to make a purchase.

Article spinning has it’s uses and you can benefit greatly from rewritten articles, when using them properly for site promotions. However, trying to avoid some penalty from Google has nothing to do with it.