Ever put something on the web that you now regret? A new technique dubbed “Googlewashing” might be a way out, but it also introduces severe risk for online reputations as SEO hackers learn how to erase any site from the Google index.

Google continues to focus on cleaning up its index and has put focus on separating duplicate content. For a while Google employed the infamous supplemental index, which buried lots of great articles in a secondary set of search results with far less traffic.

Now Google seems to be focusing on finding similar word patterns and removing content it considers duplicate completely from its index. From Google:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues . . . we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.

However, if our review indicated that you engaged in deceptive practices and your site has been removed from our search results, review your site carefully. If your site has been removed from our search results, review our webmaster guidelines for more information. Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.

But, Google is notorious for ignoring or reacting slowly when webmasters are looking for a second content review.

Even so, as long as you publish unique content or adequately modify content you’re republishing then Google will continue to treat your site with respect and include it in its main index, right?

Hopefully. But what if someone decides that your site is offensive and they want to reduce your marketability by taking you out of the Google index? They might try to use the Google duplicate proxy exploit. According to SitePro News “every time Google spiders and indexes a page, it checks it to see if it’s already got a page that is predominantly the same, a duplicate page if you will. Exactly how Google works this out, nobody knows exactly, but it is going to be a combination of some or all of: page text length, page title, headings, keyword densities, checking exactly copy sentence fragments etc. As a result of this duplicate content filter, a whole industry has grown up around trying to get round the filter. Just search for ’spin article’.

Even though your content may be tagged as questionable by Google, the search king assures us that “a general awareness of duplicate content issues and a few minutes of thoughtful preventative maintenance should help you to help us provide users with unique and relevant content.”

Related:

Entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 6:57 pm under Google, Internet, Security.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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