It’s really just guess work when it comes to what Google does.

Yeah, well it’s hard to say…

There’s definitely truth in that, but let’s look at it closely. First – let me clarify something – let’s say Google decides that your version and the version over on Dzone (for example) are the same, and that they want to server the Dzone version over yours. At that point, if the Dzone version is number 5 in the SERP, yours won’t be number 6 – it will be gone entirely (because it would be seen as a duplicate). Now – and this is just my own personal experience – the traffic that will come out of Dzone for that article is nowhere near the traffic that would come organically from you ranking for that search term. I would even go as far as to say it’s an order of magnitude difference. This may of course differ on a case by case basis but that has been my own experience with this.
Now – you syndicating on JavaWorld may be different – first, because maybe because your site already has a fair bit of authority and second – because Google might be smarter than it was 2 years ago 🙂

The problem I saw was that Google was considering that version of the article more authoritative than my own.

Yes, this can happen some times. But in-article links are syndicated as they are, so chances are that in the long run, you’ll still profit from the syndication.

Also, you’ll reach an audience that you might not reach otherwise. For instance, a recent syndication with JavaWorld brought tons of new traffic. Much more than all other syndicators combined – simply because my own name (as a blogger) and the jOOQ brand name were unknown thus far to their audience…

Hey Lukas – yeah, your blog is a great referrer – the traffic is mature and well targeted, which is great.
So – on the syndication of content – it’s a mixed bag. For the first 2 years after launching my blog – I was syndicating every article (that’s where that traffic is coming from).
The problem I saw was that Google was considering that version of the article more authoritative than my own. It knew it wasn’t the original (publish date, back link) but still – it was showing that version in a lot of searches rather than mine. So – I stopped syndicating – but as you can see, I’m still getting some traffic back from them.
And yes, some is my posting links to dzone.com (but not full articles). As a said – a mixed bag 🙂

Looks like our reach from the jOOQ blog is quite substantial in your referral section. Not only did we make it to #9, I suspect that a significant amount of traffic from java.dzone.com and javacodegeeks.com are also our syndicated content, mostly from the Java 8 Friday series. Is that correct?

Are you syndicating your content as well? Would be really interesting to learn about how you analyse your own experience with respect to syndication.