Duplicate content?

Hi,
I have been reading through this forum for some time now and have read a lot about being penalised for duplicate content. Would both sites with the duplicate content get penalised, if so what's to stop someone creating a site with duplicate content of there competitor to drop there ranks?

Interesting you should say that as i was just about to post a similar question, however mine goes like this;

Here`s the short version, i have been optimising a website for a client since around April time with moderate success so far, all is going to plan until i look a little further into competing websites and low and behold i come across a website that is completely ripping off entire content.

I mean everything from about us page to terms and conditions and even the functionality of the website itself.

I am aware of the duplicate content stance from a ranking factor point of view, however the offending domain was actually registered before the legitimate url (2002) as opposed to the current site (February this Year).

My question is from your experiences if any, will this older domain hold more weight from the aging factor? currently the newer site outranks the offending domain for a number of keywords and phrases.

I am to meet with the client to discuss the options for legal action which is my second question, what actual rights if any other than copyright infringement and intellectual property does my client have?

There is a sting in the tail of this story which i can not currently comment upon, but i will update when the recourse and outcome is more clear.

Thanks in advance

EGOL i am anticipating your response to this one, and i have approximately 1 week to counteract this (lol, the outcome NOT your response)

So if its the first sight to get indexed what would stop competitor B finding a site they know has ever changing quality content (competitor A) and stealing that content to put on there own site. As we all know google does not index or crawl a site straight away, you can sometimes wait weeks. So what if google crawled competitor B's site first, would this ultimately penalise competitor A's legitimate site and fresh content?

My situation has now been resolved after a gentle poke in the eye with a pointy stick, now i can wipe my brow and continue with my efforts.

A bit of a pain in the ar^% i know but if other sites are experiencing similar difficulty and the waybackmachine throws up no results then we need other ways of proving that it was our legitimate content and no copyscape does not have the answer, that will already tell you what you know.

I don't know of anyone doing it but whilst reading it occurred to me there may be a loophole in googles algorithms. Would it not be possible to post a sites content on to for example a article submission site and never get caught. It's just worrying that a site could be dropping ranks and never know there content is being stolen.

This is why google allows you to report spam. If they have stolen your content then report them as otherwise there can be effects on your rankings as you will go into the supplemental if google finds the other website more of an authority for this content.

ok thanks, i am new to SEO so don't know a lot about how google works etc., thanks for all your help.

Actually, a filter is much more appropriate than a penalty. As Google says that duplicate content filters exist, and the penalty is most likely the result of intended manipulation of content to rank high in Google by use of mirror domains, duplicate content, etc.

Google shows only one version, the authoritative and trusted sources of the content. Even there are other sources, they will just simply be filtered out or having less importance.

But this is the results of filtering not necessarily a penalty. As a corrective action, make sure you write your own content and stick it to your site.