3 ms·

Isn't part of the core of pagerank that certain domains are more trustworthy than others? Given that this is supposedly true, wouldn't the same content on stac

Isn't part of the core of pagerank that certain domains are more trustworthy than others? Given that this is supposedly true, wouldn't the same content on stackoverflow out rank a random new domain with the same content

equalarrow 11y ago
Exactly. In the SEO world, the common wisdom is you will get dinged in ranking or even deindexed if you publish duplicate content. Period. There is an entire sub-industry in SEO that's all about content spinning. I'm always kinda amazed that these sites show up and I usually get them for about 50%+ of my tech searches. What I think ultimately happens is Google is notified and these sites are eventually deindexed. But this still leads me to really question the whole duplicate content theory sometimes. If Google was so tight about this, these sites would never show up in the first place. It could also be that the tech terms searched for are not as competitive as, say, medical or diet or celeb terms. Maybe Google's just grabbing at any kind of relevancy at this point, duplicate or not.
- codezero 11y ago
  This is really surprising. Given that they have so much data, there should at least be several thousand domains that they treat with some special regard when content that replicates them shows up. Then again, I'm sure that there are plenty of top 1000 domains that would use this to their advantage too, oh well.
andrew-lucker 11y ago
pagerank works both at the domain and page level, originally with the emphasis on page level(hence pagerank not domainrank). While it would be hard for these sites to match the cumulative reach of SO, they will have an easier time getting specific pages to rank highly. This can also be abused with a system where most pages link to the .1% of pages that should be emphasized. In this fashion, smaller sites can throw their weight around and get specific pages to rank more highly than bigger sites. Trying to solve this issue on a purely technical level turns out to be a lot more complicated than it would seem. It is made much worse by how damaging false-positives are for a search engine (Google censored me!). So the result is that this often only gets resolved by manual actions rather than automatic penalties.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  Actually it's pagerank for Larry Page
  - tripzilch 11y ago
    hence his name is not Larry Domain.
  - WaltPurvis 11y ago
    Actually it's not. (In case anyone might think you were being serious.)

equalarrow 11y ago

Exactly. In the SEO world, the common wisdom is you will get dinged in ranking or even deindexed if you publish duplicate content. Period. There is an entire sub-industry in SEO that's all about content spinning. I'm always kinda amazed that these sites show up and I usually get them for about 50%+ of my tech searches. What I think ultimately happens is Google is notified and these sites are eventually deindexed. But this still leads me to really question the whole duplicate content theory sometimes. If Google was so tight about this, these sites would never show up in the first place. It could also be that the tech terms searched for are not as competitive as, say, medical or diet or celeb terms. Maybe Google's just grabbing at any kind of relevancy at this point, duplicate or not.

codezero 11y ago
This is really surprising. Given that they have so much data, there should at least be several thousand domains that they treat with some special regard when content that replicates them shows up. Then again, I'm sure that there are plenty of top 1000 domains that would use this to their advantage too, oh well.

andrew-lucker 11y ago

pagerank works both at the domain and page level, originally with the emphasis on page level(hence pagerank not domainrank). While it would be hard for these sites to match the cumulative reach of SO, they will have an easier time getting specific pages to rank highly. This can also be abused with a system where most pages link to the .1% of pages that should be emphasized. In this fashion, smaller sites can throw their weight around and get specific pages to rank more highly than bigger sites. Trying to solve this issue on a purely technical level turns out to be a lot more complicated than it would seem. It is made much worse by how damaging false-positives are for a search engine (Google censored me!). So the result is that this often only gets resolved by manual actions rather than automatic penalties.

wodenokoto 11y ago
Actually it's pagerank for Larry Page
- tripzilch 11y ago
  hence his name is not Larry Domain.
- WaltPurvis 11y ago
  Actually it's not. (In case anyone might think you were being serious.)