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Why Reprinting Online Hurts Your Content
January 22, 2002
By Timothy T.C. McGhee

This largely relates to the issue of reprinting your own material on other sites, and, to a lesser extent, reprinting others' material on your sites.

By reprinting I'm referring to the placing of identical content in two different places. Any difference in the look of the content does not, obviously, change the content itself. The idea of reprinting is a holdover from the print world—just look at the term for it: reprinting. Publishing online and publishing in print are very different. There are several search-related problems produced by reprinting online.

Why not reprint

The first problem is related to people finding the content. With printed publications people read your material by one avenue or another, whichever happens to come their way. It's good to reprint something because that means you have more places for content distribution which means it's more likely people will come across that content.

Online, just the opposite happens. You don't send the content to people on the Web, the people come to the content. One centralized hi-ranking page is desired for people to be able to find it—only then can they read it. Reprinting produces the antithesis of a high-ranking page: the more places there are on the Web where you put that content, the weaker that content becomes in the search engines, and then people are less likely to find that material at all.

For instance, if you have one page with six inbound links, that page will show up higher in the search results than either of two pages that each have three inbound links. You want to have as many links as possible pointing to one single location—then it shows up higher in the search results.

What happens if you do reprint?

If you reprint, identical content will show up twice in the search results. This is especially likely to happen if one is searching locally on a site—which happens around 1,000 times during a busy week on CWA's site. Duplicate search results make for a very poor customer service experience for the user (my main concern in all of this). This is true whether the duplicated content is or is not what the user was trying to find.

If the duplicate content is not that for which the user was looking, two things will happen: (1) when the user expects all content to be unique (because computers "should know" if something is duplicated or not*) when they go to the second version, the content may on its face appear unique because of the different look, but shortly thereafter they realize, "I've read this before," and they see it's the same content, it makes for a very unpleasant and frustrating user experience. (2) The other thing a useless duplicate search result means is there's less room to show relevant search results that the user actually wants. Less room for relevant results means more clicks (if they click) are necessary to find relevant content. More clicks take time and if it's too long before they find what they want, you've lost them.

If the duplicate result is the desired content, the user may still continue her search to make sure there is not something better to find. Then, if they find two versions, they are left with questions like "Which one do I link to?" "Which one do I use?" "Which one is the original?" These questions are an unnecessary frustration for your visitors that I would like to avoid if possible.

The alternative

It is generally the preferred form on the Web to find things from their original source.

Instead of "running something in C&F Report" (like Peter once graciously offered for a speech of Janice's), it's far better to wait until the speech is in it's official location (on BLI's Web site) and then put a direct link to it in C&F Report—a beverlylahayeinstitute.org link in a cultureandfamily.org publication. The same would be true for CWA articles and press releases that CFI wants to promote—just use a link. The page will be easier to find and it will not be confused with anything else. It also makes for less coding work here which means more resources devoted to developing better features, etc.

This is one of the reasons the clipper is so useful on the Web sites: it saves the work of posting something yourself and links people directly to the source which they really want anyway.

When reprinting is good.

Reprinting can be good when it's someone else's material on your site. I'm referring to the occasional example of a very good article that you want to promote with more than just a link. This can be good for several reasons:

  1. This is another page on your site—all pages link to the main site which then boosts you in the search engine ratings.
  2. Sites should be designed to house content so that all pages last forever—always a valued commodity on the Web. No one likes "404—File Not Found" errors. So, when the Washington Times link goes dead, that article lives on over the Web because of you.
  3. It will also link people to more of your content which means they can read more of what you have to say, more about you, perhaps interact financially, etc. (often in that order).

Usually when you reprint someone else's material, you close the loop by linking to the source of the publication, and their version of the document if it's available. (Longevity often being an issue, the latter is not always possible.) This assuages those users who want to find more from the original source. It also marks you as a very useful customer service on the Web to which one would not regret returning later.

* It always fascinates me when people make moral statements about what computers do: “Computers should know if the content is duplicated or not!" Oh really. And who gives you the authority to make that moral declaration?