It is well known that duplicate content is penalised by search engines? How and how much are still open to arguments but one thing that is for certain is that Google gives less importance to duplicate content than original unique content.

The topic of duplicate content filter by Google itself is quite interesting and is worth a separate disussion. We will do just that. Here we will concentrate on figuring out how to identify duplicate content. This is especially important if you buy content and need to know if the seller has sold you unique content as promised.

There are two simple ways you can do this. First select a phrase from the content at least 6 - 7 words long. Go to google and within double quotes put this phrase and search for it. If Google returns valid results, visit the site and cross verify that it is the same article.

You can also verify for duplication by visiting copyscape.com. For this save your content as a html page and upload to your server. On Copyscape, input the address of this page as http://www.yoursitename.com/this-page.html and search for duplicate content. This service will tell how many other sites are using content that matches with the content on this page.

Once you find that one of these tests have ‘failed’, you know that you were not given a fair deal!