Does copied content really affect page rank ? If so I found many odd cases on net !!

[alvalany]

I just wanted to know if copied content content is really a serious issue in deciding pagerank?
Many sites with pr 3+ are found to have copied content. Even sites like digg , stumble upon are in a way publishing copied content from other blogs ( i know that though other users itself are submitting their sites there )

Also one more thing : if a site with higher pagerank publishes a content from a site with lower pr , according to google who is having the 'copied content' ? i know that google will be displaying the site with higher pagerank, higher in search results !

[jay 11]

I just wanted to know if copied content content is really a serious issue in deciding pagerank?
Many sites with pr 3+ are found to have copied content. Even sites like digg , stumble upon are in a way publishing copied content from other blogs ( i know that though other users itself are submitting their sites there )

Google Toolbar PageRank is Googles measurement of "relative importance." Overall, copied content will not automatically diminish a sites PageRank but it certainly doesn't help. Instead i think it does more damage to how well a site ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Sites like digg and stumbleupon aren't really copying content. Users may submit a snippet of copied content but ultimately the site links over to the actual published article (at least in most cases). They are more community driven news aggregators than content publishers.

Also one more thing : if a site with higher pagerank publishes a content from a site with lower pr , according to google who is having the 'copied content' ? i know that google will be displaying the site with higher pagerank, higher in search results !

Not necessarily. Google is pretty good at distinguishing which site published the content first... and i'm sure if you looked close enough, you will find that PageRank really has no bearing on how well your site ranks. It's more about relevancy, quality and freshness of content, and optimized site components.

[canadafred]

Just to add a bit to what Jay explained, whenever you have a paragraph or so of copied content, it can have some value in the web page's ranking. Whenever the search engines finds, at a later time and different place, the exact (or extremely similarly replicated) content; the value of the content diminishes, ultimately to uselessness.

[realfarhan]

Yes copied content does not support in increasing the importance of your website.Most probably google is using the timing refrence i.e.,which site publised a certain piece of content first is supposed to be the content owner, but here involved another factor is,"online web appearance" which means that websites with more strong data base will bubble up in SERPs.But this happens mostly in cases when there is not a great difference between the publishing time(at most 1 month) for both the publishers who publised the same content.Visit SNIP for more information.