Duplicate content between domains.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  ?ukasz Rogala: Duplicate content between domains
  
  My client runs tourist site which ;aggregates offers from hotels, apartments etc. They were hit by Google Algoritm about 2 years ago, we are still looking for any reasons why (I thought that DC on different domains is the issue but in this ;industry it's typical practice - people add their apartments and copy-> paste their main site text).
  
  In your opinion - can it hurt site? I am not sure about this tbh. Another common situation - when eommerce site (for example shop with shoes) uses compare sites to gain traffic and sells it exports its products via XML file making DC with compare platform and their site - can it be problem too?
  
  Tbh I don't think that Google cares about unique information. There are a lot of sites which provide almost the same information and still rank high. Maybe we should get more social signals for the site? Maybe work on bounce rate or CTR from Google SERP?
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  Raman Mehrotra: There are many factors, we had site doing similar and were hit 2 years ago, we reworded text, linked to google+ authorship, responsive website and most important found few serious bad back links, so disavow domains since all those changes we can see the GWT graph up and improvement on ranking so .. Check all 
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  Simon Fryer: Hi +Łukasz Rogala.
  
  If the site was hit in April 2012 (about 2 years ago) it's likely to be related to duplicate content. A Panda update was rolled out at that point which introduced harsher punishment for duplicate content. ;
  
  There was speculation at the time that this was introduced with affiliate sites in mind.
  
  Panda (to my knowledge) is concerned with on-site quality, and my own experience was that it was much more concerned with on-site duplicate content and canonicalisation (or lack thereof), rather than cross-domain duplication. This is something which I think has been misinterpreted since.
  
  If the dates do line up, social signals and CTR work won't sort the problem - you'll need to dig in to your technical SEO to make sure it's on point.
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  Raman Mehrotra: I agree with +simon fryer, the main product provider may rank better at all times if they have written content first
  
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  rankyaseoservices: Original content (canonical URL) will always rank first for the keywords being targeted, and Google does in fact care about unique content, furthermore: CTR and also Bounce Rates are at the heart of #SEO and also conversions, because I would rather get 1000 targetted web traffic and convert 10% instead of getting 10000 and convert none. As for your client, your strategy needs to change completely, aggregating content from other sites? if so you are only promoting their content and it will be an uphill battle to see real profitable results. How to get around it? Simply consider having textual content (unique) on each URL that has aggregated content (perhaps reviews, comparison etc.) and always make sure that the URL has enough text (at least 300 words is a good roundabout) throw in one unique image that is fully optimized. Without truly knowing your niche, I think these insights would be of worth to consider for you. I hope this helps;
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  Simon Fryer: Hey +rankyaseoservices ;
  
  You need to be clear about the definition between "Original content" and "Canonical URL". They are not mutually inclusive. The latter suggests a rel="canonical" has been applied.
  
  If the original content is not set as the canonical URL  ;(via the canonical link element from the duplicate) it will not "always rank first for the keyword being targeted". In most instances the guy with the bigger gun (authority et al) will win. ;
  
  In this instance we're talking about off-site duplicate content owned by separate parties. 9 times out of 10 you won't find a canonical link element being used between them here. After all, both site owners want to get found for the content. ;
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  rankyaseoservices: The definition are the same, canonical is the "original content" whether off site or on site, because the very use of canonical is to suggest "the birth location" so to speak. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
  Now if the content is off site, that actually doesn't matter, meaning, just because the rel canonical isn't being used, or just because particular website ranks above the other website who first produced the content makes no difference in any shape or form (when we are talking about "original content mapped to URI". So even if a particular website doesn't use canonical (even that doesn't make much of a difference for Google because it is much more advanced about working out "the birth URL" of a URL. Now to clarify your confusion about who ranks first? Content "URL" Google becomes aware of has time stamps attached to that URL, so there is no way in this Google world can a website rank higher than the "original URI" whether it uses the canonical or not. Now your confusion about it arises because you are confusing rank relevance of a particular "keyword" particular URL is relevant to (in which case "original content" has no relevance to what we are talking about in any shape or form). All you have to always remember is "Google doesn't rank a URI" it doesn't rank "keyphrases" but rather, it ranks a "keyword" once again, it makes no difference as to the definition of "original content" or canonical URI (from Google's perspective "they are the same" meaning "the time it becomes aware of a document" is the "is the content "origin" and you don't need to use "canonical" because it is useful only to tell Google about "which version of your URI" it shoudl treat as "original"
  more can be read here:
  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html