Duplicated pages

I set up my site a few months ago and tried to optimize some of my pages
I thought were interesting so that they would rank high enough in Google
(and possibly other SEs) and actually, they did well in most SEs,
between 1st and 6th for phrases like "chateau fenelon", "chateau
castelnaud", "grottes cougnac", and so on (ok, easy SERPs, but I'm doing
this only for fun).

For a month or two, I haven't done much about SEO or even maintaining my
site (too much work).

I checked my SERPs beginning of this week, and I dropped very low in
Google, but I'm still doing fine in Yahoo, MSN, etc. I first thought
maybe Google was updating their databases, but there has been no change
for 4 days now.

I noticed, by sheer chance, that those pages had been copied, probably
recently and without my consent, to another site: could it be possible
that Google penalized the duplicated pages ?

I don't understand why my results suddenly dropped, and only in Google...

--
Want to spend holidays in France ? Check http://www.relinquiere.com/

"Vincent Poinot" <vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote

I set up my site a few months ago and tried to optimize some of my pages I
thought were interesting so that they would rank high enough in Google (and
possibly other SEs) and actually, they did well in most SEs, between 1st
and 6th for phrases like "chateau fenelon", "chateau castelnaud", "grottes
cougnac", and so on (ok, easy SERPs, but I'm doing this only for fun).

For a month or two, I haven't done much about SEO or even maintaining my
site (too much work).

I checked my SERPs beginning of this week, and I dropped very low in
Google, but I'm still doing fine in Yahoo, MSN, etc. I first thought maybe
Google was updating their databases, but there has been no change for 4
days now.

I noticed, by sheer chance, that those pages had been copied, probably
recently and without my consent, to another site: could it be possible
that Google penalized the duplicated pages ?

I don't understand why my results suddenly dropped, and only in Google...

What are the URL's for the ones that are in question? It is hard to say
anything without checking them out first.

Stacey

Stacey wrote:

"Vincent Poinot" <vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote in message
news:41dd8ed5$0$18247$8fcfb975 (AT) news (DOT) wanadoo.fr...

I set up my site a few months ago and tried to optimize some of my pages I
thought were interesting so that they would rank high enough in Google (and
possibly other SEs) and actually, they did well in most SEs, between 1st
and 6th for phrases like "chateau fenelon", "chateau castelnaud", "grottes
cougnac", and so on (ok, easy SERPs, but I'm doing this only for fun).


What are the URL's for the ones that are in question? It is hard to say
anything without checking them out first.

Stacey

My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
..../cougnac and so on.

Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
..../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.

After rechecking, I have to add that the page about Cougnac has not been
duplicated while it has dropped like others (it used to be between 1 and
3 for "grottes cougnac"), so maybe the problem doesn't come from this
duplication...

Vincent.

--
Want to spend holidays in France ? Check http://www.relinquiere.com/

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:39:35 +0100, Vincent Poinot
<vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote:

Stacey wrote:
"Vincent Poinot" <vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote in message
news:41dd8ed5$0$18247$8fcfb975 (AT) news (DOT) wanadoo.fr...

I set up my site a few months ago and tried to optimize some of my pages I
thought were interesting so that they would rank high enough in Google (and
possibly other SEs) and actually, they did well in most SEs, between 1st
and 6th for phrases like "chateau fenelon", "chateau castelnaud", "grottes
cougnac", and so on (ok, easy SERPs, but I'm doing this only for fun).


What are the URL's for the ones that are in question? It is hard to say
anything without checking them out first.

Stacey


My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
.../cougnac and so on.

Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
.../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.

After rechecking, I have to add that the page about Cougnac has not been
duplicated while it has dropped like others (it used to be between 1 and
3 for "grottes cougnac"), so maybe the problem doesn't come from this
duplication...

Vincent.

Hi Vincent
That page was last spidered on 8 Nov 2004 18:55:31 GMT. You might
want to re-submit it to google.

You can always ask the other site to remove that page or you will sue.
Just a thought.

Sorry for not being much help.
plh
Paul

Paul Burke wrote:

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:39:35 +0100, Vincent Poinot
vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote:

My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
.../cougnac and so on.

Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
.../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.

After rechecking, I have to add that the page about Cougnac has not been
duplicated while it has dropped like others (it used to be between 1 and
3 for "grottes cougnac"), so maybe the problem doesn't come from this
duplication...

Vincent.


Hi Vincent
That page was last spidered on 8 Nov 2004 18:55:31 GMT. You might
want to re-submit it to google.

True, as I said I haven't had much time to update my site lately. Do you
mean Google could consider my site less valuable because it hasn't been
modified for 2 months or so ?
That's a pity, because my site is basically static and once an article
is written, well, I have very few reasons to change it... Does it mean
it is deemed to drop lower and lower, by essence ?

You can always ask the other site to remove that page or you will sue.
Just a thought.

I did that - without threatening to sue, though. The point is that I

gave the guy the choice either to remove his pages or to keep the pages
and point to my own pages in return. Keeping this "duplicated content"
penalty thing in the back of my head, I also suggested him to "steal"
only the two first paragraphs and then point to my pages which sound a
good compromise to me: he has content, I have backlinks without too much
duplication (next question is: how much is too much ?)

What do you experts think ?

Sorry for not being much help.

Well, I'll take any clue ! Thanks !

Vincent.


--
Want to spend holidays in France ? Check http://www.relinquiere.com/

Vincent Poinot wrote:

My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
..../cougnac and so on.

Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
..../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.

Vincent.

Well, your pages still look nicer ;-)

I have to admit I cannot read French, but from the search engines'
prospective these pages are different. The layout is different, and it is
simpler on that other site, which makes me think it may (eventually) rank
even higher than yours because the search engines will be able to derive
more textual content from the first couple kilobytes of the code. I don't
know the exact figure, but in my estimation Google's bot only reads first
3-5K of HTML code on a page visited, so, the more HTML code BEFORE the
text you have (which you don't, but they have even less), the less
meaningful text of your page will be included in Google's index, and the
less ranked your pages will be and the less search terms it will show up
on.


Sincerely,
Dmitri
http://www.1-script.com/1_search/
Get search engine for your site
http://www.1-script.com/install/
Check out my CGI scripts installation offer

-------------------------------------



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"Vincent Poinot" <vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote

Stacey wrote:
"Vincent Poinot" <vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote in
message news:41dd8ed5$0$18247$8fcfb975 (AT) news (DOT) wanadoo.fr...
snip

My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
.../cougnac and so on.

Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
.../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.

After rechecking, I have to add that the page about Cougnac has not been
duplicated while it has dropped like others (it used to be between 1 and 3
for "grottes cougnac"), so maybe the problem doesn't come from this
duplication...

From what I can tell you site doesn't appear to have any penalties at the
moment. I feel that your site just has poor rankings because of not enough
links the keywords in the anchor text.

Stacey wrote:

"Vincent Poinot" <vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote in message
news:41dda1ed$0$27150$8fcfb975 (AT) news (DOT) wanadoo.fr...

Stacey wrote:

"Vincent Poinot" <vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote in
message news:41dd8ed5$0$18247$8fcfb975 (AT) news (DOT) wanadoo.fr...

snip

My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
.../cougnac and so on.

Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
.../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.

After rechecking, I have to add that the page about Cougnac has not been
duplicated while it has dropped like others (it used to be between 1 and 3
for "grottes cougnac"), so maybe the problem doesn't come from this
duplication...


From what I can tell you site doesn't appear to have any penalties at the
moment. I feel that your site just has poor rankings because of not enough
links the keywords in the anchor text.


I can certainly admit this point, but how do you explain I used to rank

much higher (between 1st and 6th position for these pages) in the past
and that I suddenly dropped ?

Next question: do you think that if I allow people like this guy to use
the first two paragraphs of my articles and then point to my pages, this
could also lead to problems regarding Google ?

Or should I simply forbid him (and others) to duplicate my content ?
From a philosophical point of view, I'm not opposed to people reusing
my articles (as long as they mention where they found them, of course),
but this should not happen at the cost of dropping in SERPs...

Vincent.

--
Want to spend holidays in France ? Check http://www.relinquiere.com/

www.1-script.com wrote:

Vincent Poinot wrote:


My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
..../cougnac and so on.


Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
..../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.


Vincent.



Well, your pages still look nicer ;-)

Thanks !

I have to admit I cannot read French, but from the search engines'

I'll work on that, I will... sooner or later :-)

prospective these pages are different. The layout is different, and it is
simpler on that other site, which makes me think it may (eventually) rank
even higher than yours because the search engines will be able to derive
more textual content from the first couple kilobytes of the code. I don't
know the exact figure, but in my estimation Google's bot only reads first
3-5K of HTML code on a page visited, so, the more HTML code BEFORE the
text you have (which you don't, but they have even less), the less
meaningful text of your page will be included in Google's index, and the
less ranked your pages will be and the less search terms it will show up
on.

I know I could certainly optimize my pages, but I'm not sure I'm ready

to sacrifice usability/functionalities for higher ranking: I guess the
link tags could be a problem because they take up some non-negligible
space, but I find them useful.
Same for the menus, I do want people to be able to navigate from one
article to another.

Sincerely,
Dmitri
http://www.1-script.com/1_search/
Get search engine for your site
http://www.1-script.com/install/
Check out my CGI scripts installation offer

-------------------------------------



##-----------------------------------------------##
Article posted with Web Developer's USENET Archive
http://www.1-script.com/forums
no-spam read and post WWW interface to your favorite newsgroup -
alt.internet.search-engines - 615 messages and counting!
##-----------------------------------------------##

--
Want to spend holidays in France ? Check http://www.relinquiere.com/

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 23:25:18 +0100, Vincent Poinot
<vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote:

Paul Burke wrote:
On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:39:35 +0100, Vincent Poinot
vincent.use-my-last-name-here (AT) wanadoo (DOT) fr> wrote:

My URLs are http://www.relinquiere.com/region/castelnaud, .../fenelon,
.../cougnac and so on.

Duplicated pages are at
http://www.fabrice-website.fr/html/chateau-fenelon.html,
.../chateau-castelnaud.html, and so on.

After rechecking, I have to add that the page about Cougnac has not been
duplicated while it has dropped like others (it used to be between 1 and
3 for "grottes cougnac"), so maybe the problem doesn't come from this
duplication...

Vincent.


Hi Vincent
That page was last spidered on 8 Nov 2004 18:55:31 GMT. You might
want to re-submit it to google.

True, as I said I haven't had much time to update my site lately. Do you
mean Google could consider my site less valuable because it hasn't been
modified for 2 months or so ?
I doubt it, but it is always worth submitting to google once a month

IMO.
I do if I have made any changes.
I did read somewhere ages ago that someone was in a similar position
of yours (I have been trying to find the article, hence the delay) and
AFAICR all he did was to resave the page offline (Giving it a new
creation date) I think he added "last updated xxxxx" on the page.
Nothing else. And then it climbed again cos google saw it as a fresh
page.
~~Dang, I wish I had that article~~

That's a pity, because my site is basically static and once an article
is written, well, I have very few reasons to change it... Does it mean
it is deemed to drop lower and lower, by essence ?
Not sure. Sorry.

You can always ask the other site to remove that page or you will sue.
Just a thought.

I did that - without threatening to sue, though. The point is that I
gave the guy the choice either to remove his pages or to keep the pages
and point to my own pages in return. Keeping this "duplicated content"
penalty thing in the back of my head, I also suggested him to "steal"
only the two first paragraphs and then point to my pages which sound a
good compromise to me: he has content, I have backlinks without too much
duplication (next question is: how much is too much ?)

What do you experts think ?

Sorry for not being much help.

Well, I'll take any clue ! Thanks !

Vincent.

plh
Paul