An editor from the popular news site The Verge tweeted that a news article had been replaced on Google’s first page of search results by other sites that had copied it. Danny Sullivan explains why this is occurring.
Copied Content that Ranks Frustrates Publishers
Copied content that outranks the original has been a source of frustration for publishers for many years.
Some of the complaints are the result of miscommunication.
When a person searches a nonsense phrase, such as randomly selected words from an article, Google doesn’t know what to do because it isn’t a real search query, and there is no answer for a nonsense phrase.
So, by default, Google performs a text search, which means that Google returns search results based on the words in a search query matching the words on a web page.
The true litmus test for whether copied content outranks original content is when copied content outranks original content for competitive keywords that users actually type in.
Should a Page Rank Twice if It’s in a Top Stories Result?
However, the situation that has arisen introduces a new scenario. What happened is that Google will not rank an article headline at the top of the normal search results if the web page is already ranking at the top of the Top Stories featured results.
Top Stories is a featured result in which Google displays news articles that are relevant to a search query.
So, if someone searches for a headline, Google will usually display the article near the top of the search results in a section called Top Stories.
However, in this case, the original article does not appear at the top of the normal search results due to what Google refers to as deduplication, an algorithm that prevents the same page from ranking twice.
So, should Google rank the same page twice, once in Top Stories and again at the top of regular search results?
Entire First Page Consists of Stolen Content
A user from The Verge tweeted that, in addition to Google’s featured news section at the top of the search results, searching for a headline from a news article resulted in Google showing an entire top ten that consists entirely of stolen content.
The person tweeted:
“Hey Google, I just searched for a headline that was published on my website and the ENTIRE FIRST PAGE after the news box was of websites stealing our content. The Verge didn’t show up until page 2.
This problem is getting worse.”
Hey Google, I just searched for a headline that was published on my website and the ENTIRE FIRST PAGE after the news box was of websites stealing our content. The Verge didn’t show up until page 2.
This problem is getting worse.
Google’s Danny Sullivan acknowledged that writers who search with a headline expect their articles to appear at the top of the results page, not on page two.
Read 8 Quick SEO Wins For Your Brand New Website.
However, he also pointed out that searching by headline is not always how regular searchers search.
Danny’s response is questionable. A valid argument could be made that many people search for an article’s title when they want to share it with a friend or on social media. So there is a real reason why people other than the author of an article may search for the title of an article.
Danny Sullivan from Google tweeted:
“We’ll take a look. I know searching by headline is common for writers and yes, I’d expect this to show first for that. But it doesn’t reflect how most people might seek this content (and for how they might search, I do find it). But again, we’ll look to improve.”
Danny then went on to explain why an original article ranks on page two for its own headline:
Here’s a follow-up on what’s happening & what we’re looking at. You do mention this, but it’s not clear from the screenshot that your article is the first thing on the page (as shown). Because it’s showing in Top Stories, it is getting deduplicated from the rest of the page…
Deduplication can often be useful. Doing this search in the way that user might by using solution-seeking terms rather than unusual terms in the headline, there you are at the top in Top Stories plus deduplicating means there’s more variety from other publications…. pic.twitter.com/638IAZLWIV
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 18, 2022
In searches like that, our systems also are going to generally seek to show the most helpful, reliable info they can. That’s why you don’t see a lot of duplicates of your article showing. Duplicates certainly exist, but it isn’t that helpful to show them….
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 18, 2022
Search Queries That Trigger Alternative Search Results
Danny Sullivan’s next tweet explains how a search query with a lot of terms, such as a headline term, causes Google’s algorithm to sort of drop out and begin returning search results that are more like old-school keyword searches, where the search results are based solely on the keywords themselves, rather than search intent or links.
Here is what Danny tweeted:
That leads to headline-oriented searches. As I said before, that’s super common among authors. I used to do it all the time, myself. But headline searches contain typically contain a lot of terms, so our systems shift to return pages that have those terms…
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 18, 2022
As previously stated, there is a search intent behind looking for headlines. It’s possible that Google hasn’t identified “headline-oriented searches” as a search intent that the algorithm should recognize.
Danny continued his answer:
This means authors are more likely to find duplicates, even though for typical searches that readers would do, these are unlikely to appear. But our deduplication feature may still kick in even for these, as was happening in this case….
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 18, 2022
As I said, deduplication can be helpful. But we also understand the concern this might be raising. We’ve been doing this with Top Stories since last May, but we’re going to revisit this to see if we should continue or perhaps make other changes.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 18, 2022
Also, I’m still checking, but I believe this deduplication is especially unique in that it only happens with Top Stories if there’s a single story shown or perhaps only for the very first story shown.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 18, 2022
Just to cap off with the further clarification I promised, we deduplicate a link from web results if a link appears as the first link in Top Stories and if the Top Stories box appears before web results. If it comes after, we don’t. And again, it’s something we’re reviewing.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) January 19, 2022
News Articles and Deduplication
Deduplication occurs when Google attempts to prevent one article from appearing twice in search results. According to Danny Sullivan, an article may not appear in regular search results if it is already ranking in the Top Stories and that Top Story is at the top of the page.
So the question is, should a web page rank twice because a user may want to see the original article at the top of the search results, even if it’s already in the Top Stories section?
When the Top Stories section is removed, the news article should appear near the top of the search results.
Need help with our free SEO tools? Try our free Website Reviewer, Online Ping Website Tool, Page Speed Checker.
Learn more from SEO and read Google Search Console products rich result report error handling updated.
One Comment