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SEO newbie here,

I have a news section on my front page that essentially reads off another sites feed (example.com/feed/) and posts direct links to each article back to that site. Pretty much a mini RSS reader with one subscription.

Will I get penalizing for duplicate content even if I link back?

My question is similar to this: Will content from my site's RSS feed that is published on other sites be considered duplicate content by search engines? only that it is the other way around.

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  • Is the duplicate content all that's on the page? Or is it just a small part of the content on that page?
    – nathangiesbrecht
    Jul 24 '13 at 20:04
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Yes. Duplicate content is duplicate content. You're not adding any value to Google's index by republishing content already found elsewhere. That's low quality content in Google's eyes and exactly what they don't want. If you're going to do this you would be best served blocking these pages from being crawled and indexed.

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  • It's my front page though. Obviously I can't block the entire page. Is it possible to block a section from being crawled and indexed?
    – meiryo
    Jul 24 '13 at 19:43
  • Unfortunately not. It's either all or nothing. You might be better off finding a way to move that content elsewhere and just mentioning it on your homepage.
    – John Conde ♦
    Jul 24 '13 at 19:48
  • I see. Would injecting it via JavaScript work?
    – meiryo
    Jul 24 '13 at 19:54
  • Maybe. Search engines are getting better at running JavaScript so there's no way to guarantee Google wouldn't see this, plus it's not future proof, and it might cause them to think you're serving different content to them which is also a bad thing.
    – John Conde ♦
    Jul 24 '13 at 19:57
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I don't think it is a case that every site that re-publishes content from other sources automatically gets a penalty. It depends on what value your page has overall. For example, if your page had lots of exclusive/must read content that was exclusive to your domain and also a news feed section that pointed to other sources then that could be quite useful, and linking out to others is good as well - if good for your visitors.

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  • Yeah, my site is a product database but I added a news section because I didn't know what to put in the front page. Would blocking this section as @John recommended be a safeguard?
    – meiryo
    Jul 24 '13 at 19:41
  • You could serve it up in a frame and block the frame from crawling, though it does sound a bit random to put a news feed there because you dont know what else to put. I would try and think of something related to your site/content and business which would enhance the site.
    – user29671
    Jul 24 '13 at 19:48

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