"Google hates duplicate content"

[runningbird]

So I've heard from a couple people here. However, I earlier quoted someone and linked to her article, thinking if anything it would help her:

For those who need some extra encouragement, take a look at the scientific evidence. The author of the blog, Own Your Health has described some studies on cold showers:

“Boosting the immune system
A pilot study of immune effects from cold water therapy with a small number of breast cancer patients found significantly increased disease-fighting cell counts in every category examined, including neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes.(3)

(3)Kuehn, G., Sequential hydrotherapy improves the immune response of cancer patients. In: Mizrahi A, et al., (eds.) Potentiating Health and the Crisis of the Immune System: Integrative Approaches in the Prevention and Treatment of Modern Diseases. New York: Plenum, 1997.

Improved circulation and function in the legs
A Swedish group administered three weeks of alternating cold and hot hydrotherapy to the legs of patients suffering from intermittent claudication (reduced blood flow) and found that improved systolic blood pressure in ankles and toes, reduced pain, and markedly better walking ability went beyond the results of standard treatment and persisted for at least a year after treatment.(5)

(5)Elmstahl, S. et al., Hydrotherapy of patients with intermittent cluadication: a novel approach to improve systolic ankle pressure and reduce symptoms. Int Angiol. 1995;14:389-394.”

The part in quotes are actually two snippets from her blog that I pulled together. Is it detrimental to search rankings to just quote a couple portions of an article like that? I told her and emailed her the link, but for the future, there is always good information out there that I would like to quote and link to.

I will always give adequate attribution to what I splice into my work, but its just the complicated SEO that confuses me on the ethics of it.

[floslib]

You'll likely want another opinion, because I'm not sure of this, but I think as long as you only take small quotes, and mix it in with a sizable amount of your own content, it won't be flagged as duplicate content for anyone involved.

Naturally, no one knows exactly how the algorithms Google uses work, but I'm pretty sure they look for significant chunks of duplicate content with no supporting content on the same page. Also, I think they check for which content was posted first, then penalize whichever content was posted later without penalizing the original poster, though I don't know for sure if this is the case.

Either way, as long as you're pulling small pieces, giving credit, and writing your own original content around it, I think you should be fine, and you won't be harming anyone else's work.

[Brutha]

Nobody outside of google can tell you the line where google will start to punish someone for duplicated content.
The google algorithm is however smart so it should be able to recognize that you are the person who copied and therefore don't punish her but punish you if it decides to punish someone.

There however also the issue of copyright. If you take to much content from someone else they can sue you.
Fair use law differs from country to country and the US law isn't exactly clear.
Therefore it's best to ask in cases like this for permission.

[bluedragon]

As far as I remember, a Google employee once stated that duplicate content never affects the original poster, in the worse case, it will affect the website that copies it. Google knows which page was indexed first, and it will view that as being the original. I am not sure if it was an official or an unofficial statement.

[Lilith785]

I happen to be in the SEO business.

A couple things come into play.

Yes it does matter who got indexed first, but what matters more is which site is more relevant. On a forum like this you may find content that duplicates other sites from quotes and whatnot, but for the specific search terms that her site is optimized for, her site would be more relevant than a forum that has multiple topics. Google always tries to disply the most relevant and most trusted sites for a search first then it there are other sites with the same "duplicated" content, Google leaves those out of the results. I hope my lenghty explaination helps. relevent

[runningbird]

Thanks all.