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I have a blog with over a thousand posts. I have posted some of those to a news aggregator site and included the same preview photo and description that I used for it on my own site and the link to the post on my site. Since the site is mainly videos and images, the description was usually a complete match of 4-6 lines of text.

It now looks that I have been affected by panda and since I am not doing any bad stuff, I suspect it might be due to duplicate content. For example, when I search the title of my posts, sometimes my site is not even returned, but the news aggregator site is.

Could this be the problem with panda?

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5 Answers 5

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Matt Cutts touched on this a little a few years ago in a video on duplicate content and how Google tries to determine the original source of the content and if you publish it elsewhere or someone uses it to link back to you the original piece. While you linked back to your site the news site may just have more authority than the page which it's published on your site. You can get an idea of which page is more authoritive by look at the page rank as well as back links to each and compare.

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You can use the canonical tag when republishing content to avoid this issue. This will set the original document as the authoritative one, and the republished copies as pointers to that article. This way Google will not penalize the original document, or the site where it is republished.

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It's not all about Google Page Rank

First off don't worry about PR I have over 20 sites with PR1 and 0's beating PR's 4-7. It comes down to how good is your content, and the quality of links you have.

Avoid Thin Content, Merge Pages and Make Better Pages

If you have a 1,000 Articles then the chances are they are considered THIN by Google, have you checked to see if these pages are THIN? Less than 400-300 words each? If so you should strongly consider merging some pages together to improve the user experience of your visitors and Panda will like you for it.

Now I don't mean merge a page about cats to a page about dogs but I think you know what I mean.

If you have 6 pages about Cats, Merge them! offer more content on the page and actually improve the experience your visitors have while visiting your site never mind they will remain on your site for longer.

In a nutshell Google wants rich experiences say hello to Panda

Google's Panda is all about slapping sites that they believe are not returning visitor experience, duplicate content if any is an experience they can obtain else where, thin pages have been abused by webmasters trying to get Google to give them Authority on a Serp, IE a site with 1,000 pages about Cats would like have more authority than a site about cats with 20 pages, this is no longer the case and many factors are brought in while before they didn't. It's possible whit a small site to outrank a larger site, well actually I believe its easier if you stay on topic.

Authority is Important

Take amazon for example, they are trusted by Google's lots but if I type Cat Leads into Google, Amazon is not top even though they have more pages, more pet items, more back links and so on, Pets at Home are top for me, this is because the Word Pet, and The authority gained on the Word Pet.

So while your rankings may have dropped its not always Panda to play, they are stomping on sites that are trying to dominate all serps, and never mind localization is coming into effect more aggressively every day.

Google loves REVISITED content

I would start at looking at the content itself, use copy-scape site to check for duplicate content, check webmaster tools for duplicate pages/titles/metas, thin content (CHECK THIS MOST) and check the Google's Panda, and Penguin what they look for and see if you can fix things.

GOOD LUCK

Good Luck and I hope this helps you out :P

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Aggregator sites will no longer rank better in Google results if administrator of these don't add some interesting information like text, videos, and images for visitors. I think Google consider these sites to be low interest for visitors. The Google Panda algorithm penalized many aggregator sites, even big aggregator sites.

Four to six lines text is too few. Thus, it could be a problem for SEO. I know an aggregator website which ranks well in Google results but each news is accompanied by 15 lines of unique text at least.

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  • Thank you. I just noticed almost all the page serps disappeared again even for the pages that rank perfectly, but once per month everything dies. It's basically been a roller coaster ride. Unless I search "<TOPIC> <SITE-NAME>" it doesn't even show up at all anymore. Other similar sites have the same amount of text but rank just fine and so does the aggregator, even though it's basically just a title, a couple lines of text and a link to the original article. They do have a PR of 6, while our site has a PR3. This is so frustrating...
    – Dejan Pelzel
    Dec 12, 2012 at 13:37
  • I understand your frustation but you know Google decide for all and nothing says other aggregators won't be penalized in the future.
    – Zistoloen
    Dec 12, 2012 at 13:51
  • "...our site has a PR3" - your site or your page? Page rank is a per page metric.
    – MrWhite
    Dec 12, 2012 at 15:04
  • Isn't the question about why the main (blog) article is ranking lower than the aggregator site, whereas this answer is stating why aggregator sites (in general) rank lower?
    – MrWhite
    Dec 12, 2012 at 15:08
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yes it is bad for SEO. In SEO content should be fresh and unique. You can'nt use duplicate content. It will mark your work as spam.

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