SEO: Proof of Duplicate Content Being Penalised.

[Steven UK]

As we have bought and paid for this software, we decided to continue with testing it, and as such we have continued to monitor this duplicate content situation.

Now, I know the owners care about this software, so my intent is not to pull it to pieces, but the fact of the matter is, I believe this software to be the culprit for the demise of rankings on my forum. 100% certain of it, and 100% certain that Google is penalising the software.

Now, onto this proof that Google are still competing the pages, and punishing threads for it, see this:

http://www.google.co...iw=1361&bih=742

Then click on the following:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included. (click this bit on the above link).

The above is the supplementals, that Google see as not being relevant enough to be shown in the SERPS, duplicate content, competing pages, etc. etc.

And you will see strings in there, pages, and content that should absolutely not be getting indexed as duplication, and creating this problem. You will also see that page 2 of the thread has been put in there, too, together with other page references.

As a result of this duplicate content, the main thread got sandboxed/demoted, when it was in position 2, page 1 originally. I am also finding the xml.gz sitemap outranking threads. Pure craziness.

[Matt]

Hi Steven,

This is essentially a re-hash of this topic.

I must admit to being a little disappointed at your continued need to bang your drum. You made your position quite clear in that 20 page behemoth of a topic in which I replied to constantly and listed the improvements we'll make in 3.4.

It was also unclear whether or not IPB was actually to blame for your original cause as you admitted over Skype in one of our conversations after I contacted you offering outside of support assistance with your site that you believed a large issue was your Wordpress installation which you added right before you saw your search rankings take a dive.

No one really knows what Google wants to see. The best we can do is continue to evolve. We are doing that. We are listening. We are actively seeking out customers to try and assist beyond the normal scope of support to better understand the scope of our SEO needs.

On two occasions we've refunded you your license purchase and you've gone back and re-purchased. Only a week ago you told us (and everyone else in this feedback forum) that you're leaving IPB for pastures anew.

I really appreciate the feedback but there's only so much that is constructive.

As always, I am on Skype if you want to chat but I'm going to lock this as I see no good coming from it.