Duplicate Content Penalization

[domdom]

hello forum friends

I've been concerned about the whole duplicate content thing I've been reading about. On my site home page, I have what I call "leader paragraphs" to articles of interest, where I put maybe the first 2-4 paragraphs of an article on the home page, and if the person wants to continue reading the article, they click the "Read More" link to another page where the entire article is posted. Since much the first few paragraphs on that page will match content from the home page, I am worried I will be penalized for duplicate content.

So, what exactly is the "penalty"? How will this affect me? Is it minimal enough that it won't have much of an effect or is it some kind of penalty that will prevent me from getting my Pagerank? Any feedback is appreciated!

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[sigma]

Usually, when Google finds "duplicate" content the de-index the younger page. Although Google can certainly tell whether or not content is duplicated, I'm not convinced they do much unless the entire page is darn near identical.

Regards
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