Comments on: How Tribune Co. plans to rid itself of SEO-killing duplicate content

By: Dominic108

Dominic108 — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:06:00 +0000

I agree with SEO Company that making the content dependent on cookies can be a form of cloaking, especially because these cookies can be systematically used when redirecting different URLs to a canonical one. Google prefers to be able to make its own decision whether or not distinct URLs should be collapsed into a single one. Cloaking to manipulate search engines can even result in a penalty. On the other hand, there is no penalty for a natural and open duplication of content as long as the duplicate content is only gathered to please customers, not to fool the search engines. Google will pick one of the duplicates to present in the search results and it wants to do that in the best way possible. Therefore, hiding the differences and presenting one URL is counterproductive and a dangerous practice. The canonical tag is a better solution. It suggests to Google that the different URLs should be collapsed into a canonical and which one should be the canonical. However, the situation is tricky if the different URLs contain different contact info (business name, phone number and street address), which is likely to be the case. This is discussed here http://civm.ca/.

By: Dominic108

Dominic108 — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:48:00 +0000

Andy Batten suggests that we use the canonical tag in pages that contain the same article, but look like pages of different journals. This is useful if the journal to be displayed is included in the URL. It’s a way to tell Google that the different URLs should be collapsed into a single URL to avoid duplication of content. Great, but the canonical tag is for different URLs with very similar content. Having different journals implies having different contacts, etc. Is this sufficiently similar? I would be very interested to know what is the status of this new design. Did we hear from Google engineers about it?

By: Chloe Williams

Chloe Williams — Fri, 20 May 2011 07:56:00 +0000

Very Interesting!
Payne’s plan everything seems working well. Keep it up Mr. Payne. I have been following your works and plans since I find them all very relevant and informative.

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By: Andy Batten

Andy Batten — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:14:38 +0000

Just an update to this, Google now supports a cross-domain canonical tag:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html

This should make many of the duplicate content issues moot, except in those cases where articles are illegally redistributed on other domains and don’t include the tag.

By: Newspaper’s top 5 search queries are commercial brands » Nieman Journalism Lab

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:01:39 +0000

[...] quick lesson in search engine optimization: Brent Payne, the Tribune Co.’s head of SEO, whose wisdom I wrote about last week, posted a video yesterday demonstrating a new feature in Google Webmaster [...]

By: Some Newspapers Get It, And Some Still Don’t

Some Newspapers Get It, And Some Still Don’t — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:06:46 +0000

[...] first article that caught my eye was titled “How Tribune Co. plans to rid itself of SEO-killing duplicate content.” This post was published on the same blog that published the post about the AP’s new [...]

By: Inisheer

Inisheer — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:29:18 +0000

Google is a national, even worldwide platform. It has no reason to send it’s readers to multiple newspaper websites that are running the same content. This ia a basic problem the newspapers just refuse to understand. Search engines want original content, because their readers do.

By: SEO Company

SEO Company — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:18:55 +0000

It will be interesting to see if the cookie or URL parameter does not appear to be a form of cloaking, which is also looked down upon by search engines. Other than that, eliminating duplicates also helps search engines (and the internet) by reducing the amount of unnecessary content online.

By: Gina Chen

Gina Chen — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:08:26 +0000

I think this is a great idea. I’m no SEO expert, so I can’t really say if it will work, although it sounds promising. But what I find really important about this idea is that it’s an example of a media organization changing itself to get its stories better play in Google searches, rather than just moaning that Google’s system is unfair. That’s a big step in the right direction. Will be interesting to see how this works, and how others can use this idea.

By: How Tribune Co. plans to rid itself of SEO-killing duplicate …- SFWEBDESIGN.com

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:32:06 +0000

[...] from: How Tribune Co. plans to rid itself of SEO-killing duplicate …Share this on del.icio.usDigg this!Share this on RedditBuzz up!Stumble upon something good? Share it [...]

By: links for 2009-09-08 « Glenna DeRoy

links for 2009-09-08 « Glenna DeRoy — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:25:56 +0000

[...] How Tribune Co. plans to rid itself of SEO-killing duplicate content » Nieman Journalism Lab (tags: seo onlinejournalism technology web) Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)links for 2009-08-03links for 2009-08-06links for 2009-09-01 [...]

By: 5 O’Clock Roundup: Sprint’s disappearing promo, stem cell breakthrough (sort of), search engine optimization | UpOff.com

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:14:31 +0000

[...] Newspapers figuring out how to block duplicate copies of stories. Here’s why you care — Duplicate stories in Google’s index cause the individual copies of those stories to get a lower relevance ranking score among Google search results. So the multiple copies of a story may actually make it less likely you’ll ever see it, if you’re among the roughly 50 percent of newspaper traffic that comes from Google searches. The Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, has a tech trick in the works that will result in “One article, one URL, maximum [search engine optimization].” [...]

By: SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 8, 2009

SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 8, 2009 — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:58:52 +0000

[...] How Tribune Co. plans to rid itself of SEO-killing duplicate content, Nieman Journalism Lab [...]

By: Andy Kruse

Andy Kruse — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:38:07 +0000

Linking to the original source is a huge win for you, Brent. It probably wasn’t an easy sell, so congratulations.

But I think the AP’s problem (and one that I deal with as well) is that most of its nationally shared content has no home. It’s created for the masses and they can’t pick just one destination URL.

AP seems to get this, at least, and is doing something about it. I’ve seen their plans for 2010 Olympic content and it involves a lot of exclusive hosting and not as much syndicating/duplicating.

By: Optimal Use Of Technology And Content | Hartford Courant Alumni Association and Refugee Camp

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:48:13 +0000

[...] you online geeks in the audience, here’s Tribune’s latest innovation: maximum search engine optimization. The plan is to eliminate duplicate stories on all Tribune [...]

By: Michel Leconte

Michel Leconte — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:13:24 +0000

Hello,

I think Payne is on the right track there. I believe automation is the way to go when it comes down to execution, especially if you’re working across a large number of domains. For the rest of us publishers with less of a clout and nimbler technical team than Tribune Co., I recommend looking at the news content management module built by my organization. To the best of my knowledge, it is the only system that builds Google news compliant architecture out of the box, RSS feeds, newssitemap xml feeds, and a number of other neat things. A description can be found at the bottom of the following page:
http://www.seosamba.com/seo-technology.html