Is duplicate content really that bad?

I haven’t got on the ’stop stealing my content’ bandwagon yet that every blog I’ve seen is on, I understand people copying general content, images etc for websites is a straight up violation, but blogs being syndicated isn’t the same in my opinion.

There are heaps of blogs out there that syndicate other blogs content automatically, these blogs provide no value to anyone really, most are bad default templates so it’s obvious no one really works the blog, their only purpose is to build links, and search traffic which in turn produces money from advertising for whoever owns them, bloggers bitch and whinge about their content being syndicated on these blogs but seriously, they are doing you a favour.

They are pushing your content to more people, giving you more back links and saving you time that you would spend marketing and ‘guest blogging’ anyway.

Yes, Google punishes duplicate content, but it’s not super harsh and not for the owner of the content, your site will be more legit and less punished then someone who is syndicating lots of content anyway.

If your content is being syndicated, start posting with more links back to your own site and win from whatever traffic these syndicators are bringing in, like shit people, its free marketing, use it eh?