Matt Cutts says Honest site owners don't really have to worry about duplicate content

"Search engines are not trying to penalize content," Mukherjee said. "We're trying to find the right content to promote. Independent of how large our indexes get, there will always be capacity constraints."

"Honest site owners often worry about duplicate content when they don't really have to," Google's Cutts said. "There are also people that are a little less conscientious." He also noted that different top level domains, like x.com, x.ca, are not a concern.

Also:

Jake Baillie, TrueLocal's president, described the top six duplicate content mistakes:

1. Circular navigation - having different paths through a site should be avoided. Publishers should define a consistent way of addressing page content no matter what navigation path a user takes through a site.
2. Printer friendly pages - if these are html pages, robots.txt should be used to block search engines from indexing them.
3. Inconsistent linking - calling directory pages in an inconsistent manner, like /directory and /directory/, should be avoided.
4. Product-only pages - it is not good for a site to have product pages and SKU pages; they should be consolidated if possible.
5. Transparent serving domains - use 301 redirection instead of DNS aliasing to get users to a canonical site from multiple domains.
6. Bad cloaking - Don't use cloaking scripts you didn't write. Make sure your cloaking script is returning separate content for each URL being cloaked.

Notice mention of archive is not listed anywhere.

Whole article: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/to...sYourSite.html

I have never feared the duplicate content penalty. Google is simply going to take the "duplicate" items and index the one they like higher. Right now, that is archived threads, IMO. With the new and improved googlebot, the regular versions of threads may get better publicity on google, but nobody knows at this point.

Hey sportsoutlaw, I just saw this post on myadminzone.com: http://www.myadminzone.com/2006/03/0...icate-content/

I've never had the archive enabled on my forum, do you think it would be a good idea for me to enable it?

Originally Posted by APJ

Hey sportsoutlaw, I just saw this post on myadminzone.com: http://www.myadminzone.com/2006/03/0...icate-content/

I've never had the archive enabled on my forum, do you think it would be a good idea for me to enable it?

I myself would recommend it. If I am not mistaken Sportsoutlaw has reenabled it for his site as well

In the end it is really up to you. From what I have seen and read Google is not currently seeing vBulletin's archive as duplicate content and is not penalyzing sites for this.

I turned mine off in November, turned it back on over a week ago per a request, and after waiting for a few days have decided to turn it back on and leave it on as of yesterday.

Now it is back to the waiting game to get all those old pages re-established.

Originally Posted by sportsoutlaw

I turned mine off in November, turned it back on over a week ago per a request, and after waiting for a few days have decided to turn it back on and leave it on as of yesterday.

Now it is back to the waiting game to get all those old pages re-established.

It feels like all I have been doing these past 4-5 months is waiting :(

hm better to use the archive as a sitemap (links to the actual threads) IMHO

Originally Posted by dutchbb

hm better to use the archive as a sitemap (links to the actual threads) IMHO

Why do you say that? You lose revenue and no one can prove that google is hurting anyone for this.

IMO, it is better to have a bunch of links directing to actual content than 2x the same content and not having a sitemap. From the moment I did it this way , I got better results with google. I'm convinced it is the better choice, so in that case it doesn't matter if google allows it or not.

Hmm, I just discovered that the archive is enabled, but vbSEO is just acting like a sitemap. I'm just as concerned about ad earnings as duplicate content.

There has been some discussion to block spiders from everything but the archive? Is anyone here doing that?

You can't do that, you have to show the same thing to users (guests) as too SE's

Originally Posted by BamaStangGuy

Notice mention of archive is not listed anywhere.

Actually, he did mention it as his #2 bullet point: "Print Friendly pages." Jake just didn't take the time to say that Print Frinedly pages include any pages with the same content but different layout/design/formatting. Doesn't matter what your website calls them.

Your real thread page, the print friendly version generated by vBulletin, and the archive version are all 3 using the same content. "Same content" means "duplicate" content.

The archive versions of threads are not your friends. They are leeching away from where you want people & search engines to go: your actual thread pages.

Good luck, Ross

I don't mean cloacking but doing a block with the robots.txt file

Originally Posted by dutchbb

You can't do that, you have to show the same thing to users (guests) as too Search Engine's

Originally Posted by rmjvol

Actually, he did mention it as his #2 bullet point: "Print Friendly pages." Jake just didn't take the time to say that Print Frinedly pages include any pages with the same content but different layout/design/formatting. Doesn't matter what your website calls them.

Archive does not have the same content!

Ex. http://www.mustangevolution.com/foru...3-a-19855.html

is not the same as

http://www.mustangevolution.com/foru...e/t-19855.html

The first link has two pages. Page 2 is not the same as the archive link.

There is no way google sees that as duplicate content and in the same article Matt Cutts says that if you have a 5 page article and one print friendly page with all the information in it that is fine!

Prove to me that Google hurts you for having the archive disabled! It can not be done. Sites with a vanilla install of vBulletin have some of the highest rankings in Google.

Your real thread page, the print friendly version generated by vBulletin, and the archive version are all 3 using the same content. "Same content" means "duplicate" content.

Google does not penalize for this. Whether or not it is "duplicate content" is not relevant when there is NO evidence that Google penalizes sites for this.

Tell me ONE good reason why, for example, Sportsoutlaw.com should turn their archive off? Why should they go from 60 dollars a day with the archive being the biggest part of that money maker to 60 dollars a month??? How is turning the archive into a sitemap when he already uses Google Sitemaps helping him?

The archive versions of threads are not your friends.

BS, tell that to the guy that went from 60 dollars a day to 60 dollars a month!

They are leeching away from where you want people & search engines to go: your actual thread pages.

Show me where this hurts sites! Show me actual proof that it has helped sites. It did not help Sportsoutlaw at all.

Originally Posted by APJ

I don't mean cloacking but doing a block with the robots.txt file

You would have no PR/indexing for normal pages. I don't think this is a good idea at all.