: Are literary works published in my and various websites considered duplicate? I have published an ancient literary work which is not copyrighted or owned by any party. i can see other websites,

@Megan663

Publishing content on your site that has been published elsewhere can be OK:


As long as you have permission to do so (in this case it is old and out of copyright, so fine)
You tell your users what the content is and where it came from
You link to an original source
Your users find it useful
You have something to add to that content such that users would rather find that content on your site than elsewhere. (Commentary or critique for example.)
You have enough original content on your site as well (at least 50% original, but ideally 80% original)


Google doesn't penalize for every instance of duplicated content. Even if there is no penalty for the duplicate content, it may not help you get visitors:


You are competing with all the other copies that are out there
Google will likely prefer the original source of the content and the most reputable copy of the content.


Google will penalize duplicate content if:


It appears to be scraped or stolen (especially without attribution).
Users don't react well to it (especially clicking back to Google after visiting your site.)
There are so many copies of it out there that there is no reason to send users to your copy of it.
Your copy isn't the original, most reputable, or most useble; and doesn't have any commentary or critique.
Your site doesn't have enough original content to balance all the republished content.

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@Pope3001725

Copyright status is not a factor in determining if it is duplicate content. If the content is available on more then one URL than it is duplicate content.

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