Your RSS Might Be Considered Duplicate Content
August 9, 2008
Believe it or not, having an RSS feed might lower the number of listed pages from your blog in the Search Engine Results Page. Why? The answer rests in two words: duplicate content. When a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo!, encounters your blog, it sees both the content from the particular blog post itself and the content from the RSS feed for the corresponding blog post. Essentially, the search engine is seeing similar content in two different places on the same domain. Each of these places, RSS and the blog page, competes for placement within the search engine results page (SERPs). While it is not a negative thing to offer readers an RSS feed, offering the search engines an RSS feed without adequate instructions will result in lowering the number of indexed posts.
How do I fix duplicate content from my RSS feeds?
Fixing duplicate content coming from RSS is quite easy. The Meta Robots Wordpress Plugin offers the ability to tell the search engines not to index RSS feeds. Human beings will still be able to see that an RSS feed is available when visiting your site. And even though the search engines will also see that RSS has been made available, they will not index RSS information. Thus your site will not be competing against itself to have a listing in the SERPs.
What about the All in One Seo Pack?
It is important to know how <meta robots=”" /> is being implemented throughout a site. While the All in One SEO Pack helps to prevent duplicate content in addition to providing useful <title></title> ,<meta description=”" /> , <meta keywords=”" /> information, it does not yet offer the ability to control what the RSS Feeds are doing. The All in One SEO Pack and the Meta Robots Wordpress Plugin offer similar features in some areas, while they differ in other areas.
- I would recommend using the All in One SEO Pack for features pertaining to description, title, and keywords. In other words, the strength of the All in One SEO Pack rests in telling the search engines “how” it presents your blog information to the search engines.
- The Meta Robots Wordpress Plugin is better suited for performing noindex and general clean-up functions. The strength of this plugin rests in telling the search engines “what” can presented from your site in the results page.
Case Study
I often visit Google in order to see how many of my personal blog posts it has indexed to the SERPs.
Beginning few days ago, the number of blog entries was decreasing. One day, the number of entries was 8, and the next day, the number would slip down to 5. The day after, the number would increase to 9, then slip down again to 4 the following day. While I understand that Google enjoys shuffling their SERPs, I found it odd that much of the unique content from my blog was not indexed at all. In addition, what had once been indexed was not showing up anymore.
After installing the Meta Robots Wordpress Plugin, however, I noticed that the number of blog entries that Google had indexed began to rise. Unless otherwise noted, the search engines will index all pages found, and will follow the links on those pages.
The Mistake of Assumption in Relationships
August 3, 2008
What is an Interpersonal Relationship?
Interpersonal relationships are social associations, connections, or affiliations between two or more people. They vary in differing levels of intimacy and sharing, implying the discovery or establishment of common ground, and may be centered around something(s) shared in common.
A common mistake in relationships
The most common mistake made in relationships is the mistake of “assumption.” The mistake of assumption refers to the belief that one’s perception perfectly aligns with reality. Rather than understanding that one co-creates their own reality, the mistake of assumption reflects the belief that understanding occurs in one direction, i.e., something or someone exterior to myself communicates information to me, and I process that information without contaminating it with elements from my own personal point of view. During the mistake of assumption, reality writes itself to my consciousness without interference or assistance.
To flesh this out, let’s use a situational example. Let’s suppose that you’re at a party with your girlfriend. After a few minutes of mingling, you notice that she is across the room talking to some other guy. You don’t know this other guy too well. She whispers something to him, and they laugh together. Even though she’s told you before that she has no interest in anyone else, you begin to wonder why she’s talking to him in the first place. She appears to be captivated to the point that she ignores the happenings around her. You begin to feel jealous.
Making sense of assumption
How does it make sense that jealousy, rather than happiness or indifference, surfaced in this example? Given what you saw, and given what you know, you might suspect that something nefarious is afoot. However, what if she was asking this other guy for some advice about what she should get for your birthday? In other words, what if the whole point of talking to the other guy was to make surprise birthday preparations for you? Does it still make sense to respond to the situation with jealousy?
From the party to everything else
In the above example, emotional response depended upon the context of events. Whereas incomplete information led to jealousy, knowing the whole picture led to a different emotion. But this is more than a knowledge and information issue. What are the conditions of possibility that made feeling jealousy, rather than another emotion, real? The situation, the “objective” reality, isn’t enough to determine emotional response — there must be a person co-creating the meaning along with the perceived situation. The one who perceives jealousy must be standing in the world in such a way that jealousy reveals itself as the likely candidate.
The Mistake of Assumption in Relationships (Condensed Version)
- Others share my values.
- Others know what I mean.
- My point of view is always right.
Reminders to combat the mistake of assumption
- My point of view does not happen in a vacuum; it happens against the background of all my prior experiences. In addition, anticipation and expectation can influence my point of view.
- Since others are likely to have different experiences, their point of view is necessarily different from mine. Agreement and compromise occur in relation to dialogue and communication.