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New Blogger Duplicate Content Cure - Fix Duplicate Contents

Post: Gaurav Akrani. Date: 7/31/2008. Comments (16). Label: , .

New Blogger Duplicate Content Cure Article


What is Duplicate Content ?


Duplicate Content simply means repetition of same information, usually copied word to word and simultaneously made available at various locations either on your own blog and/or published on others' websites (with or without your consent). Most widely used blogging softwares like Wordpress, New Blogger in Draft also suffer from Duplicate Content issues. If you're a Blogspot user you probably know that once you publish any post its information is simultaneously made available at three different locations on your blog. These three locations are Post page, Index page and your blog's Archive page.

Google's Duplicate Content Policy


Google search engine penalise sites with Duplicate Content and blogspot blogs are no execption to its strict policy. I don't blame Google for such strict behaviour as I think its only motto is to give credit to original content provider and crub content copiers by labeling them under supplement results. This helps Google to do some justice with original content provider and overall increase users' satisfaction by filtering duplicate information.

A Duplicate Content Trap


It may get messy if original publisher's site itself gets caught in Duplicate Content trap. This has happened with one of my blog. Initially all of its new pages were indexed by Google.com for few days but later most of them suddenly went off into Google's supplement results. Duplicate content badly hammers site's indexed pages, its pageranks, affects traffic quality and finally revenue generation too.

Tips For Duplicate Content Cure


Duplicate Content is very easy to fix or cure by using following tips:-

1. The 1st very basic step every new blogger should remember is that never copy and paste others contents directly on your website or blog. Even if you do so unluckly, see to it that you better rewrite the same message in your own words. Please! Never copy directly others contents on your site since Google's Algorithm will definitely catch your copied contents and later penalise your site badly.

2. The 2nd most important step is to prior verify (by searching on Google.com) whether the data you're about to publish is already indexed in search engine or not. If you find it is already indexed word to word then better re-write it again in your own words. However if you write articles without referring other online resources then you need not follow this step since anyhow you'll produce unique original material.

3. The 3rd step is to make your own blog's platform a Duplicate Content Cured.

Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure


As far as wordpress blogs are concerned there is a easy solution for them in following Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure Code :-

<!-- Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure -->
<?php if((is_single() || is_page()) && (!is_paged()))  { ?>
 <meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" />
<?php } ?>
<?php if(is_home()) { ?>
 <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow,noodp" />
<?php } ?>
<?php if(is_archive() || is_category()) { ?>
 <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow,noarchive,noodp" />
<?php } ?>
<?php if(is_search() || is_404()) { ?>
 <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow,noarchive,noodp" />
<?php } ?>
<!-- Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure -->
http://devmogra.googlepages.com/Wordpress-Duplicate-Content-Cure.txt.

To implement this on your wordpress blog open wp-content\themes\default\header.php in a notepad and add above code anywere inside its head tag. Above code willl instruct robot to index only article pages and not archive pages of your wordpress blog. Further very important, you need not use WORDPRESS DUPLICATE CONTENT CURE PLUGIN with this code.

Blogspot (Blogger) Duplicate Content Cure


What about Blogspot users ? There is an easy solution for them too but blogspot users may have to edit there blog template. To do so follow these steps:-

Step 1) Login in your blogger account and then go to Layout >> Edit HTML.

Step 2) Backup your original template first by clicking 'Download Full Template'

Step 3) Then look at your template code and scroll till you find < head > and just after that but before < body > add following recommended code to make your blog permanently Duplicate Content free:-

See picture below to know, How to add code in your blogspot template?

Duplicate Content Cure


Code For Indexing Only Blogger Article Pages...


This Code is Highly Recommended !!!

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'>
<meta content='noindex,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='robots'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='index,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='robots'/>
</b:if>
http://devmogra.googlepages.com/Tested-2009-Duplicate-Content-Cure-C.txt

Above code will instruct a search engine to index only unique article post pages and not to index either home page or archive pages.

After testing for nearly 7 months, I say, above Blogspot Duplicate Content Cure Code works great not only on Google but also on other search engines including latest Bing and improved Yahoo Search. It is safe to use above code and indexing your unique article(item) pages won't be a problem.

I highly recommend all blogspot users to use only above tested code in their templates to effectively Fix Duplicate Content. I'm also using this same code on my blog.


Alternate Code For Indexing Both Blogger Home Page & Article Pages...


Alternate Case:- Some bloggers may want to index both Home page as well as Post pages but not Archive pages, if that's the case better use this code...

http://devmogra.googlepages.com/alternate-code-duplicate-content-cure.txt

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<meta content='index,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='robots'/>
</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='index,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='robots'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='noindex,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='robots'/>
</b:if>
</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;archive&quot;'>
<meta content='noindex,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='robots'/>
</b:if>

This alternate code will index both Home page as well as Article(item) Post pages of your blog but not Archive pages.


I've covered all major duplicate content issues. If you still have a problem then let's discuss it. Please use comment box on this page and leave me a message.


Best of Luck and Happy Blogging !!! Rds, Gaurav Akrani :)


Article Updated On: 26th June 2009.








16 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...
     February 16, 2009 at 6:56 PM

    Thanks Gaurav

    Great Post.Would you mind sharing the code for adding meta keywords to individual posts in blogspot?

    Please reply to rbsvijay@gmail.com

  2. James Chen Ball said...
     February 18, 2009 at 9:07 AM

    excellent, thank you very much..i hope this doesnt cause me any problems with search engines though... all my post pages will still be indexed, yes?

  3. James Chen Ball said...
     February 25, 2009 at 8:43 AM

    10 days later: actually your recommended code stopped yahoo crawling my site. and 10 pages in that period have not and are still not indexed. when i took the code off two days ago, all new pages were being indexed as per usual again....i think your efforts here have been in vain, u need to take another look at this code and also take it off the site or fix it before more people suffer by it! please!

  4. Gaurav Akrani said...
     February 25, 2009 at 6:25 PM

    Yahoo don't obey (follow) robots direction specially for blogspot blogs.

    I've tested it on my blog, till date it haven't. I don't even expect it do so, it is full of bugs.

    Slurp is not friendly with new blogspot might be google rivalry. I'm not sure about this.

    No problem with Google and Ask. Tested it and working well with them. This shows quality of these search engine.

    As a final measure you can remove these lines from above code to stop directing yahoo's slurp.

    -----------------------------------
    meta content='noindex,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='SLURP'

    meta content='noindex,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='ROBOTS'
    ------------------------------

    My code is not wrong it aims only at indexing post article pages and gave good results to me. If Yahoo is not obeying robots direction its not my mistake. This is not a problem with Google.

    Finally if you think it is not suitable for you better don't use it.

    Rds, Gaurav.

  5. Gaurav Akrani said...
     February 25, 2009 at 6:37 PM

    Warning! To all people.

    Use above Duplicate Content Cure at your own risk.

    Yahoo is not working well with it.

    However other search engines including Google works well.

    This is for your kind information and my motto is to help others and not hurt others.

    I'm still using above code in my template and it is working well with Google and not with Yahoo.

  6. ganesh said...
     April 20, 2009 at 12:58 AM

    for blogger duplicate content cure code, out of three which is better and more efficient and can i use three of them together

  7. Gaurav Akrani said...
     June 25, 2009 at 6:10 PM

    Teflon Buddha >>

    Now after testing for nearly 7 months I say using my recommended code is safe.

    Works for all major search engines including Bing, Yahoo and Google.

    Issue Solved !!! June 2009

  8. Anonymous said...
     June 29, 2009 at 10:19 AM

    new code working for me. simple and effective. thanks for sharing.

  9. OBLO web ID said...
     July 2, 2009 at 6:14 PM

    hmm.. I like to play in meta tag, but its hard :(

    I still confuse how to get SEO for blogspot..

    still learning.. any idea :D

  10. MindRich said...
     July 9, 2009 at 9:35 AM

    I'm wondering why you are not using the above good in this webpage of yours?

    I tried to view the source to look into it but I couldn't.

  11. Gaurav Akrani said...
     July 9, 2009 at 7:33 PM

    Hi MindRich,

    I'm using above recommended code.

    You have not checked it correctly. Check once again. 1st open view source of this article(item) page then press "Ctrl+F" search for word 'robots' (without quotes) and you will see the output of above recommended code.

    It looks just as a one line ...

    meta content='index,follow,noarchive,noodp' name='robots'

    Why you don't see entire code ?

    Because this is an article(item) page and as per code instruction only article page must get indexed. Hence automatically get index query is embedded and other noindex line get rejected.

    So view again before accusing me that i'm not using it.

    I hope you're good with HTML, XHTML basics.

    Thanks for commenting :)

  12. David Aragon™ said...
     September 7, 2009 at 4:09 PM

    Hi there Gaurav Akrani,

    Congratulations for yout blog, it's really good. I added the altenative method (index both Home page as well as Post pages) to my blog today.

    I was wondering if you have any reports from other users, is this code really safe?

    Best regards from Brazil!

    CHINFRAS e TALS

  13. Gaurav Akrani said...
     September 7, 2009 at 9:22 PM

    David my recommended code is giving expected results on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

    I takes about a month to get results. Keep checking Google.com using this string for your blog....

    site:chinfras.blogspot.com

    This will help you check whether expected pages are indexed or not.

    Important: Use nofollow for linking external sites by making appropriate changes in your blog's template by adding rel tag like this "rel=nofollow"


    ----Report on My 1 Year Experiment------

    You can verify working of my recommended code.

    Search following string in Google.com and you'll see all article pages of my blog are indexed (without Home and Archive pages)

    site:kalyan-city.blogspot.com

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

    Thanks for commenting.

    Rds, Gaurav Akrani

  14. amit said...
     November 15, 2009 at 6:37 PM

    I use this code, sir i want to know that when how many days it takes to working .

  15. BT said...
     January 25, 2010 at 1:36 AM

    Thnaks for explanations. It seems very useful article. I will try it.

    I want to ask you about Rel="Canonical"!

    Why blogger automaticly add Rel="Canonical" to our theme? What is it for? Is blogger add for duplicate Contents?

    I hope you will give an answer to my questions. Thanks for your reply.

  16. Passos said...
     January 29, 2010 at 10:55 AM

    Muito Obrigado
    Estava com um problema de conteúdo duplicado, apliquei este maravilhoso código, e tudo resolvido!
    Vou indicar este maravilhoso Blog aos meus leitores.
    Forte abraço!

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