I have a question regarding duplicate content. I work for a website that is planning to enter into a partnership with another site where we would be sharing entire articles with them, resulting in the same articles appearing on both sites. I'm concerned about the duplicate content that would appear on both sites hurting our search engine rankings.

I've also read that having your article published on different sites can be a good thing as long as both sites are reputable. Is it true that Google will only index one of the sites that publish the article? If this is the case, wouldn't both sites be competing for the same rankings? Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.

I've also read that having your article published on different sites can be a good thing as long as both sites are reputable. Is it true that Google will only index one of the sites that publish the article? If this is the case, wouldn't both sites be competing for the same rankings?
Therein lies the rub. You are correct in assuming that (in general) Google will only index one of the duplicate content pages, depending on which one it finds to be the canonical source page. If you put it into the agreement that your site will be the one to put the article up, and your partner can have it say, 3 days later... this may help to make sure yours gets indexed first. But in such a short timespan, that may not always be the case either.

The last time I was faced with something like this, we simply provided snippets or intros to the articles to the partner site that directed them back to the main site. As long as the snippets are paraphrased content and not a replica of the opening paragraph, you effectively provide unique content to your partner without duplicating entire article pages.

You can also try including a link in the article on your partner's page to the extent of, "Article originally appeared on Example.com on such-and-such date," linking your website there instead. Then, if it gets manually reviewed by Google, they'll be certain to know where the content originated.

Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it. My understanding is that even if Google indexes the other sites page instead of ours, there are other benefits to doing this that outweigh possibly losing an indexed page on Google. For example, we would increase the number of inbound links to our site coming from other trusted, reputable sites thereby increasing our quality score on Google. Is this true, and in general, would you say there are more pro's than con's to having our articles published elsewhere?

You're getting a few things mixed up, Glennjames. If the other website publishes before you, links to you, and they have more IBLs and are more authoritative than you (i.e. higher PR) then sure, this can help you in that you get inbound links and possibly increases in PR. But, that's ONLY if those articles are meant for that purpose: link building.

If the articles are part of your optimized content, then you are shooting yourself in the foot because those articles are supposed to help build your website's relevancy (vis a vis relevant content). If the other site publishes before you and Google determines you have the dupe content, then you don't get the relevancy.

Do you see the difference? If your goal is to just get IBLs, then your content is a calculated sacrifice to dupe penalty. If your content is part of your SEO efforts for good content, relevancy, etc. - then this agreement is not a good sacrifice.

If the latter scenario, then there are definitely ways to get around this, depending on how you frame your agreement. You COULD put that content into a jpeg or flash file. I'm sure you can imagine other ways too.

But you should think on what priorities are for you.

I've also read that having your article published on different sites can be a good thing as long as both sites are reputable. Is it true that Google will only index one of the sites that publish the article? If this is the case, wouldn't both sites be competing for the same rankings? Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.

Google will index both of them, but you're creating a scenario where your page may not be served in lieu of your other offsite page, or that you're indeed competing. Google could see your other offsite page as a better fit for a user query.

So if you're going to do this, you need to concentrate on making your site the authoritative 'home' site of this content. I see it all the time when comparison shopping engines out rank brand ecommerce sites for shared product descriptions, because the brand sites don't do enough SEO to prove they're the authority (despite their domain name).

Cryptblade makes a great point here. You cant butter both sides of your bread. These articles should have one goal primary goal; content or inbounds.

If it is inbounds, you may be better off not publishing the same content on your site at all. If it is content, then I like the idea of the doing the article intros as metasynman suggested above for your sharing partnership.