During Google SEO office hours, John Mueller answers whether publishers can copy their own content and publish it, essentially copying parts of their own content to create similar but different content. John Mueller says it can be to the point where it can no longer be, and then explains where that point is.
Self-plagiarism?
The person who asked the question described it as a publisher “plagiarizing” themselves. But that’s a misuse of the word plagiarism, as plagiarism is defined as taking content from someone else and then twisting it into one’s own.
Obviously, one cannot steal from oneself, just as one cannot steal from oneself.
What the person asking this question really means is copying their own content.
Here is the question being asked:
“Does Google allow publishers to copy their own content?
For example, I wrote an affiliate article that recommended something for my mom. Can I copy the content of that article and write more for my sister, wife, aunt or grandmother? “
reuse content
Mueller noted the misuse of the word plagiarism and spoke about it.
Mueller replied:
“So…I don’t know what the full definition of plagiarism is. But if you reuse your own content, it doesn’t seem like real plagiarism, at least the way I understand it.
From Google’s perspective, it’s basically up to you if you take content from your own site and publish it again if some element of the page changes. “
Content should focus on value
Many times, we can think of content in terms of how Google responds. But Google’s response is usually based on how much value the page provides to site visitors.
Mueller continued his answer:
“My assumption is that in many cases, just copying an existing article and changing some of the text in it doesn’t provide much value.
So my feeling is that from a strategic standpoint, you might be better suited to write something unique and compelling for these topics, or create an article that covers these different variations.
So from a strategic point of view, I recommend this.
But purely from a policy standpoint, I don’t think there’s any particular way for you to take individual articles and then make…some copies.
So here it is… purely from a practical standpoint, it’s up to you.
But my suggestion does cut down on actually very good articles. “
doorway page
The person asking the question is implying, to some extent, a variation of the doorway page.
An old-fashioned website approach is to create content pages for all 50 US states, and for each state create pages corresponding to the 20 or so most populous cities.
The pages are basically the same except for the state and city names.
Google refers to these doorways as doorways, which can result in human penalties.
What’s this Google’s doorway official documentation warn:
“Gateways are websites or pages created for a specific, similar search query. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in the user’s search results, each of which ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination.
They can also direct users to intermediate pages that are less useful than the final destination. “
Mueller cautioned against inadvertently creating doorways:
“If you want to copy your content very strongly, an extreme situation that can arise here is that you end up creating doorway pages.
This essentially takes one piece of content and creates lots of variations, just with different words in it, which violates our webmaster guidelines.
So that’s something I’d watch out for, and also that you’re creating a ton of low-quality things…I’d almost say your site’s spammy pages are basically like fluff and don’t provide any unique value overall.
Rather than diluting your site’s content like that, I suggest you focus on making your site’s main content stronger.
This is my suggestion.
So if you ask if Google can accept it like you can do whatever you want on your website, that doesn’t mean Google will take it seriously. “
Focus on content, not shortcuts
The big takeaway here is that content is a website’s most important asset. Content can determine the success of a business.
Seeing the importance of content, then it makes sense that content is one thing you can’t skimp on or take shortcuts.
Citation
Watch John Mueller answer questions at 7:34:
