What constitutes duplicate content?
-
I have a website that lists various events. There is one particular event at a local swimming pool that occurs every few months -- for example, once in December 2011 and again in March 2012. It will probably happen again sometime in the future too. Each event has its own 'event' page, which includes a description of the event and other details.
In the example above the only thing that changes is the date of the event, which is in an H2 tag. I'm getting this as an error in SEO Moz Pro as duplicate content.
I could combine these pages, since the vast majority of the content is duplicate, but this will be a lot of work. Any suggestions on a strategy for handling this problem?
-
Hi Atul,
Different languages is NOT seen as duplicate content. If you take the same article and present it in both English and Spanish, that would be considered two unique articles.
-
Hi Ryan,
What about a site in 3 different languages Targetting 3 countries with same content ?
Would Google consider it as duplicate content.
Thanks
-
You rock!
-
Duplicate content is determined when a significant percentage of the content (i.e. the words on the page) is duplicated on another web page. Sorry if that seems too obvious but that's the definition. I am not sure what percentage SEOmoz or Google uses to determine duplicate content but based on your description it sounds like 90%+ of the content is duplicated.
Some options:
1. Add unique content to the page. Work to ensure at least 50% of the content is unique to the page. You can share information specific to the month involved. A Christmas pool party might be cold and you can talk about the holiday involvement. You can share images from the prior year's event, experiences from participants, etc.
2. Move the content to a single page. You can offer a single event page with information about each month the event is held.
3. You can maintain a single active page at a time. After the December event is over you can remove the page, publish the March 2012 page and 301 redirect the December URL to the March page.
4. You can canonicalize the various versions to a single page. If you take this step it is important to keep track of the indexed page version.
5. You can noindex all except one of the pages.
I suggest the above options are in order of preference. The first option will likely yield the best results. If you are not willing to go with that option, try the second option, and so forth.
-
Thx for the reply.
The events come up as separate instances when people are browsing our site. E.g., they browse all upcoming events at a certain swimming pool (rec center), and get a listing with a brief overview. Then they can click on an event details page. 1 event details page per event.
E.g., http://www.chatterblock.com/facility/12/crystal-pool-and-fitness-centre-victoria-bc/events/
From a user experience, this works great. question was asked because I don't want to be penalized for having duplicate content.
-
You could use the Rel="canoncial" tag but that will affect your search rankings.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content
Are people actually searching for each month separately? If not, this might not be much of a concern.
Could you create a page that lists all the dates and that would be a where you could point the Rel="canoncial" tag to?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Please help - Duplicate Content
Hi, I am really struggling to understand why my site has a lot of duplicate content issues. It's flagging up as ridiculously high and I have no idea how to fix this, can anyone help me, please? Website is www.firstcapitol.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alix_SEO1 -
Duplicate Content For Product Alternative listing
Hi I have a tricky one here. cloudswave is a directory of products and we are launching new pages called Alternatives to Product X This page displays 10 products that are an alternative to product X (Page A) Lets say now you want to have the alternatives to a similar product within the same industry, product Y (Page B), you will have 10 product alternatives, but this page will be almost identical to Page A as the products are in similar and in the same industry. Maybe one to two products will differ in the 2 listings. Now even SEO tags are different, aren't those two pages considered duplicate content? What are your suggestions to avoid this problem? thank you guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RSedrati0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content (with and without www)
How can we resolve pages with duplicate page content? With and without www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
Thanks in advance.0 -
Duplicate Content: Organic vs Local SEO
Does Google treat them differently? I found something interesting just now and decided to post it up http://www.daviddischler.com/is-duplicate-content-treated-differently-when-local-seo-comes-into-play/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daviddischler0 -
Need help with huge spike in duplicate content and page title errors.
Hi Mozzers, I come asking for help. I've had a client who's reported a staggering increase in errors of over 18,000! The errors include duplicate content and page titles. I think I've found the culprit and it's the News & Events calender on the following page: http://www.newmanshs.wa.edu.au/news-events/events/07-2013 Essentially each day of the week is an individual link, and events stretching over a few days get reported as duplicate content. Do you have any ideas how to fix this issue? Any help is much appreciated. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bamcreative0 -
Duplicate content resulting from js redirect?
I recently created a cname (e.g. m.client-site .com) and added some js (supplied by mobile site vendor to the head which is designed to detect if the user agent is a mobi device or not. This is part of the js: var CurrentUrl = location.href var noredirect = document.location.search; if (noredirect.indexOf("no_redirect=true") < 0){ if ((navigator.userAgent.match(/(iPhone|iPod|BlackBerry|Android.*Mobile|webOS|Window Now... Webmaster Tools is indicating 2 url versions for each page on the site - for example: 1.) /content-page.html 2.) /content-page.html?no_redirect=true and resulting in duplicate page titles and meta descriptions. I am not quite adept enough at either js or htaccess to really grasp what's going on here... so an explanation of why this is occurring and how to deal with it would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW0 -
Duplicate page content and duplicate pate title
Hi, i am running a global concept that operates with one webpage that has lot of content, the content is also available on different domains, but with in the same concept. I think i am getting bad ranking due to duplicate content, since some of the content is mirrored from the main page to the other "support pages" and they are almost 200 in total. Can i do some changes to work around this or am i just screwed 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smartmedia0 -
Duplicate Content On A Subdomain
Hi, We have a client who is currently close to completing a site specifically aimed at the UK market (they're doing this in-house so we've had no say in how it will work). The site will almost be a duplicate (in terms of content, targeted keywords etc.) of a section of the main site (that sits on the root domain) - the main site is targeted toward the US. The only difference will be certain spellings and currency type. If this new UK site were to sit on a sub domain of the main site, which is a .com, will this cause duplicate content issues? I know that there wouldn't be an issue if the new site were to be on a separate .co.uk domain (according to Matt Cutts), but it looks like the client wants it to be on a sub domain. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasarrow0