Googlewashing is a new term used to describe a growing practice by the Almighty search engine (among others).  In practical terms, it describes a cleansing process.  You’re probably thinking. “how did Google get dirty?” In fact, its index has gotten rather filthed up over the years as many… ranging from outsourced SEOs to marketing affiliates… have tried to “game” its search algorithm by making commercial information look like non-commercial information and other technical trickery.  It is critical for all marketers and publishers of original content to pay attention to this trend as early signs indicate that Google, itself, is having a difficult time keeping track of who to index and who to de-list/purge. 

The latest e-plague, in the eyes of search engines, is being dubbed “duplicate content.” Recently, Google has begun to scrub itself clean of this unwanted phenomenon; hence, the term “Googlewashing.”

Duplicate content is largely what it sounds like: information that has an original source but can be found in many other places.  Sound like plagiarism or “syndication gone wild?” For the most part you’re starting to understand the problem for search engines.  In the simplest of terms, “too much of one specific thing in too many places” makes it difficult to distinguish the original, (hence, “good” or “high quality") information from the stolen or regurgitated stuff. 

Who steals and/or regurgitates… and why?  Yes, affiliates of all sorts have been known to.  For simplicity’s sake, here’s the skinny:

1) Some Marketing Affiliates leverage data feeds provided to them by marketers (like you, perhaps).  Do the the contents of said data feeds look similar?  Most often they do… but do they look similar after your affiliates place them onto their Web pages?  This is the key question.  If they do look mostly similar you have, in effect, created your very own duplicate content machine - your affiliate program.

2) Some click-focused Contextual Advertising Affiliates (who make money from programs like Google AdSense or Overture ContentMatch) simply don’t have the time or energy to create their own original content… so they swipe it from somewhere else and slap it up on Web page(s).  Mixing some AdSense advertisements that are contextually-based on the fake/stolen content gives users something to click on and the affiliate a revenue stream.  But how do affiliates get users to the site?  Three letters: SEO and usually not the pretty kind.  As you can see, it’s easy to find.  Here is an example of a headline/article used rather liberally across numerous sites geared to garner ad clicks via “content.” Heck, there’s a whole get-rich-quick-for-doing-nothing industry out there that has sprung up and, so far, Google seems happy to play along.

So what harm is there in this?  That’s another debate entirely but in the eyes of search engines duplicate content is not desirable and is to be eliminated.  Do the good guys (the original sources of the content… i.e. advertisers) ever get mistaken as the bad guys (the “content” purveyors)?  You bet they do and would you believe me if I told you that one of Google’s own has gotten caught up in the mess?  Indeed, the search Goliath recently Googlewashed a blog belonging to one of its own employees.