How does Google know site of first publication?

[Beverly]

Many forums I visit have copied forum posts, as if someone is going around posting the same discussion (verbatim) from one forum to the next. Maybe this is the same user going from site to site, or an over zealous forum member on one site who is trying to boost their own forum post count by scraping content from another forum.

And, I'm wondering how Google knows which one of these pages is the site of first publication. That brings up another point, how do you prevent this type of thing from happening on your own forum, where people steal your forum posts and copy to their own site? As maybe that could affect your own search engine rankings, if Google determines the other site that copied your content is the site of first publication?

 

[mckey]

I have noted a good point. I am also curious about the same question. What will happen if someone keep doing so? Which site will be more affected, the site from where copied or the site where it is published later? Waiting for Answer.

 

[Jake]

Google crawls the internet (literally) and saves copies of pages on super big hard drives. Literal copies of files are saved to their machines, so when they get a copy of content and a copy that seems to be the same (their software knows via an algorithm they haven't released), then it is categorized as such. The penalty is more than likely a decreased spot in the listing.

 

[Cz. Ervin]

You must actively watch out for users who seem to post unrelated posts or change their language from time to time. Since these are the less obvious spammers the penalty for having that content on your website is slim compared to having a website pointing to drugs/adult/illegal content.

You shouldn't stress yourself too much about this, just make sure that you prevent users of gaining benefits from such activity (make links nofollow for example).

 

[Gamer Outpost]

You must actively watch out for users who seem to post unrelated posts or change their language from time to time. Since these are the less obvious spammers the penalty for having that content on your website is slim compared to having a website pointing to drugs/adult/illegal content.

You shouldn't stress yourself too much about this, just make sure that you prevent users of gaining benefits from such activity (make links nofollow for example).

I think she is asking if Google will recognize that someone has copied posts from forum to forum, and if posts copied from her own forum could damage her search engine rankings.

The only way I see to stop this is to A) ban all spammers as fast as possible, IP ban them if you can, and B) contact the owners of forums that have your forum's content and let them know the deal.

Other than that, there's not much you can do. Just hope that Google recognizes your forum as the site of first pub.

 

[jhony117]

Goggle having a copy detection software. That recognize this is copy paste material or unique.