Duplicate content and more Google weirdness

[alexcruncha]

I dont know if its just me but it seems like Google is having a joke at the moment. I spent a few days clearing up duplicate titles on my site indicated by Google webmaster tools because of a pager system that is on my site.

Now for a keyword I used to rank for on page 1 for 1+ years my site has vanished and in its place I sometimes see 5+ results on page 1 and 2 in Google for the same competitors website, page and content that is accessible from 5+ different URLs.

Got to love the recent changes Google has made.

UPDATE: After close examination I noticed the pages are not 100% identical... they all contain a common 500~ word article, a flash game and ads at the top of the page but below the common section there are additional articles that are different on each one of these indexed pages. So the pages end up containing something like 30% duplicate content... and the page titles vary slightly with a different month inserted into each one. I guess you learn something new everyday... and I was worried about duplicating summaries of pages in lists.

[casinorecommender]

Alex sorry but could not understand the story. Please summarize it and write more to-the-point so that we can contribute and learn from you also. Thanks

[alexcruncha]

To explain it more clearly I have noticed that Google has made a change in the way the search results are presented.

I am sometimes seeing several pages of the same site listed on pages 1 and 2 for specific search terms. In the case I refer to above I was sometimes seeing up to 5 or 6 results on pages 1 and 2 from the same site for certain search terms. On this occasion the pages had a high percentage of duplicate content, which Google usually slaps you for... but in this case they have been heavily rewarded, which seems strange. After Google's recent Penguin and Panda updates some results have gone haywire IMO.

BTW. Thanks for the PM I have just responded.

[casinorecommender]

Hi Alex

Now it is all clear. In fact i have been pbserving similar sorts of things with our group of sites. So we have tu trust, wait and observe the Big Brother "G" . We do not have any other thing to do! Do we ? but i am sire the useful content will win each and every game ! Thanks for the PR response. I am responding to that right now. take care

[justbookies]

I wonder regarding duplicate content whether google allows quite a bit at the start of pages now because wordpress by default creates so much duplicate content on a site and they may have factored a bit of that in. Wordpress blog style sites almost always have the opening few paragraphs of a post listed on the home page and then obviously those paragraphs are duplicated within the page for that post itself (apart from categories, tags, archives etc etc. If you don't "noindex" that stuff then there can be pages of duplication).

[casinorecommender]

That is for sure but IMO Google's tech can easily identfy the sites duplicated content reason like WP. So if we think of the algorith of G, it is too complicated than we could imagine of...