mediajunk

SEO practitioners have long suspected that Google takes a hard stance on "duplicate content".

Now this hunch has been confirmed, as Google has been awarded a patent for what it describes as a "'method and apparatus of estimating similarity".

The obvious application of this patent is to hide duplicate pages, or pages that are roughly similar, from searchers. Instead, Google will present only the page that it deems to be the "original" (how it decides this is a question for another day).

Google has had to take this action in response a sneaky trick known as "page-jacking", where search engine spammers identify a page that is already showing up in the top 10 of the SERPs for a particular keyword, then copy that content -- usually with some changes -- to their own website.

However, the patent may have other applications -- such as helping teachers and examiners to detect plagiarism. The sale of essays, assignments and exam answers online is big business, as this Google search for "buy essays online" shows.