Usage Rights: Google "Gotcha" for Internet buyers?

[LauraD]

Okay, here's a scenario and questions for you. (Sorry, possibly a big can of worms here--I hope somebody can prove me wrong!)

Caveat: I've never logged in as a buyer, so I'm not sure what CC is currently telling buyers about Internet usage of articles they buy. Maybe they already say that users who want to post articles on the Internet must buy either a "Unique" or "Full-rights" license or suffer the wrath of Google.

Scenario: Let's say I sell an article to two different buyers for "usage rights". Both buyers, it turns out, put the article up on the Internet, and Google punishes the second site (traffic-wise) severely for publishing duplicate content. That second buyer may not know that Google does this. If both buyers (or all buyers, or all but the first buyer to post an article on the Internet) buy usage rights only and use the text offline (paper article, magazine, flier, etc.) or on an intrAnet or something, no problem because only one copy of the article is on the Internet for Google to index. The only time it becomes a problem is if, say, the same article is published on an Internet blog and on another Internet website. In other words, my understanding is that two or more customers can currently legitimately buy usage rights and publish the same article on their Internet website/blog/whatever, and they may not know about this Google traffic punishment, and they may not know if they're the first to publish on the Internet or not (if that even matters, which I'm not sure that it does).

So, the big question is... Should there be an additional selling category, for example "Internet Usage" rights, to ensure that customers know that if they're not the first person to purchase "Internet usage" rights and post the article, then Google will severely cut at least the subsequent sites' traffic, if not also the first site's? If it also cuts the first site's traffic, which I think it does, then maybe this should instead be a special type of unique usage sale, such as "Internet-Unique Usage": after the first such sale, then only "Non-Internet Usage" rights can be sold? (for magazines, fliers, handouts, whatever--print material or intrAnet usage only...)

That all leads to further questions... If such a (confusing) change in sales tiers were made, would this increase our "usage" sales and decrease our "unique" and "Full rights" sales, and if so would that be a good or bad thing for our overall revenue? How would it affect our pricing strategies, if at all? How would it affect authors and how would it affect customers? Do we already know how customers are going to be using purchased content (Internet, intranet, offline)?

Hopefully someone understands Google's latest (May 2013) search engine changes better than I do and can prove me wrong straightaway. But, true to what I've read, since the May changes to Google, I've had content stolen from other places and the traffic to my original article plummeted, and there was almost no traffic to the thief's site containing the copied content, either, since they posted my stolen content years after I did. (Note that this was a case of theft, not legitimate usage rights sales, as in the scenario I'm presenting related to CC.)

Thoughts anyone/everyone?

[LauraD]

Okay, I did some further digging, and came up with Google's own words describing how it handles duplicate content:

From: https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 6359?hl=en

"However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.

Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a "regular" and "printer" version of each article, and neither of these is blocked with a noindex meta tag, we'll choose one of them to list. In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results."

This means that if we ever sell usage rights to more than one customer who then puts that content on the Internet BOTH/ALL customers will be penalized severely by Google. If you're the second person to post the content, the first person needs to be told that their site page ranking may suffer "or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index". They are fairly draconian with respect to this, I can tell you: someone stole some of my content and posted it on a big site: the entire site "no longer appeared" to be on the internet after Google took action against them. I would hate to have this unwittingly happen to one of our customers; lawsuits could even be involved if someone's whole site is taken down even for a short while.

One possible solution: rename our existing sales category from "usage" to "Non-Internet Usage", and strictly warn users of the consequences of publishing the material on the Internet. (Which I suppose means CC would need to periodically CHECK to make sure this isn't violated. <sigh> No easy answers here.) Then, if they want something to put on the Internet they must by Unique or Full rights.

A second possible solution is the one I proposed above: Dividing our existing "usage" category into "Internet Usage" and "Non-Internet Usage", making "Internet Usage" into another unique category that can never be resold, therefore we can charge higher prices for it. That might be easier for us to price appropriately and for customers (and authors) to understand.

Any thoughts from anyone, especially CC? (Should I be sending this information to CC in some other form/way to make sure that they are getting it and either accepting the risk or acting on it appropriately?) Thanks!

--Laura

[Lysis]

There's no duplicate content penalty. Duplicate content dilutes your rank when you use the same content over and over. If you create like 20 sites with all the same content, then yes, you could have some trouble, but the person buying usage with maybe 1-2 other people using the content could outrank competitors. Depends on the site. Having 20 sites (I've seen people do it with 1500 sites) with the same content just spun for different cities or keyword phrases is what they mean by manipulating search results and being deceptive.

What Google is saying in that excerpt is that they may choose one copy of the content and filter out the others, meaning they won't index the page. That's not a penalty or manual action.

You can also buy content for users and just noindex the page deliberately. This way you have content for traffic but the particular page isn't indexed. That's for people who have something like "latest news" from news feeds on their site.

[LauraD]

Lysis--

Correct, they're talking about deceptive as well as practical (print/online) duplication of work.

However, if Google doesn't index or choose to display a page that our "usage rights" customer was expecting would be indexed, shouldn't they know about that? I know from personal experience with 5 different stolen articles that, though I published years in advance of the newcomers, my traffic tanked and I had to unpublish those pages (for my purposes).

I think the buyers of usage rights should be informed of this penalty, at the very least, in case they were counting on a particular article to be indexed (such as if they had ads on it or the order form for their product, for example, or other important-to-their-needs info on it). All it took was about 3 paragraphs duplicated approximately to trigger trouble with this latest release of the Google search engine (in May?). Perhaps a simple note in our documentation for buyers, "Note that if someone else has or will buy usage rights to this article, your article and the page it's on may not be indexed or show up in a Google search. Therefore, to ensure that your page is indexed and "findable" by Google search, be sure to purchase Unique or Full rights to the article." Most people don't read, but those that will/do won't then be disappointed if their page or entire site (if they've purchased many of our articles under "usage" rights) vanishes from the internet. And, CC can't as easily be sued if some customer throws a hissy fit.

[Lysis]

It's not a penalty. -_-

Your site likely tanked for several of the other 200 factors they use to rank sites. You can rank despite the content being duplicate. It's just not optimal. Don't believe anything you read on blackhatworld, warrior forum or digital pointless.

And, even if the buyer buys full rights doesn't mean google will index it.

And FYI: Google changes the algorithm every day. Don't believe the dumb "phantom updates" and dumb stuff you read on lousy SEO blogs. They sometimes make announcements on stuff they think affects a lot of people, but not always.

Your best source of info is here https://productforums.google.com/forum/ ... webmasters

And yes I am the snarky asshat Lysis on that forum. If it wasn't for JohnMu being the cool dude that he is, they'd probably ban me by now.

[LauraD]

I'm sure you're right! Thanks again, Lysis, for putting things in perspective. Now, of course, I've gotta go see this "snarky" side of you in action... You? Banned, potentially? It's hard to think of, but then I suppose I'm 'not as bright as your average bear'. ROTFL!