Maybe it’s a glitch, maybe it’s a new approach from Google to police duplicate (and possibly stolen) content: all links pointing to the duplicate being credited to the original.
I.e. the incoming links of the thief site accounted as incoming links for the victim site. At least for that particular page where the stolen content resides.
This approach would indeed have a couple of advantages.
1. Compensation for the victim; targeted penalty for the thief
Any links the crook gets for the stolen content will be attributed to the original. Even the links that point to that page from his own site. It should hurt. And still, it’s better than the idiocy of blanket penalties (like minus six, minus thirty, minus etc.).
2. An alert for the victim
When such unknown links show up in the External links report of Webmaster Tool, upon a quick investigation the owner can easily identify sites that stole his content.
3. An inherent logic
Any link the stolen content receives is a vote. Those votes should honor the creator of the content even if given (perhaps in good faith, by third parties) to the duplicate.
Problem is, this approach stands only when the original piece can be identified with certainty. Which is where Google and other search engines still seem to have difficulties.
Tags: duplicate content, google, incoming links, stolen content, Webmaster Tools
