Press Releases and Duplicate Content on Event Related Site
-
I have a site that lists events. I ask those submitting events to submit original content if possible, but frequently they submit press releases which are already published elsewhere. I rewrite some of the press releases, but do not have time to rewrite every press release that comes my way. I want my users to get a comprehensive list of events, but I don't want get a penalty for duplicate content. What is the best solution?
-
Syndication tag can be used if you are not worried about your pages in Google news.
You may also use "noindex" or "canonical" if you want to play a very safe game. But as you know, your pages won't be indexed.
If you mention the content source at prominent places, you will be O.K.
Example:
In title you may say as "....event by ........."
In the body, you may say as "...thanks to .........."
As long as the overall percentage of duplicate content in your site is in very reasonable level and you link back to content source, you won't find any problem.
Google clarified that content duplication alone will not lead to negative impact.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html
-
Thanks Devin,
That seems pretty reasonable and in tune with what I was thinking myself. Unfortunately I think if I want to provide users with a complete list of events I will have to probably include some press release material. A couple of further related questions might be:
- Should I be trying to prevent search bots from crawling pages if the content is not original (by using noindex tag and/or use of robots.txt file)?
- I wonder if the
syndication-source
tag might be more relevant than the canonical tag?
http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=191283
-
Hi Andy,
A non-technical solution would be to have an email template and send it to whoever submits a press release. Something like...
"Dear so and so,
_Thank you very much for your submission to my site. I would be delighted to include your event in my listings. Unfortunately I am very wary of featuring a press release that has been published ad verbatim on other websites. I would really appreciate if you could alter your submission to include _whatever specifications you need .
Once I receive this I will publish your event immediately. "
Alternatively, you could use the rel=canonical tag targeting the original page the press release was published on. This would prevent you being done for duplicate content. However, your page will be less likely to appear for searches conducted for that event. I'd imagine you'd prefer your own pages to appear in the SERPs so this probably isn't ideal. I've never had to deal with this kind of problem myself so I'd be very interested to hear what others have to say.
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
-
What is the Best Content Spinner to Use?
I'm looking for a good article spinner. I used to use Spin Doc but it's not as intuitive anymore.
Content Development | | 01023451 -
Does aggregating content hurt your moz / google rank?
I have a news section on my site that I aggregate from multiple RSS feeds. They are stored on my site and I have sitemap that links to them. Is this a negative thing to do? Since its overall duplicate content to another site, it may be a strike against me. Should I just leave it as an updating feed and not keep the articles visible on my site?
Content Development | | BrickPicker0 -
Duplicate Content- Archives
Our site is showing duplicate content for about 20 pages, they are all on the site as regular pages and in the "Archive" section. So the URL is different by one word but all the content is the same, is there a way to fix this and make it to where Google doesn't see it as duplicate content? Thanks!
Content Development | | legallaw0 -
Should a business blog be on a separate site or on the ecommerce site itself?
Hey there. I'm a new Pro member and this will be my first question on the Q&A. Thanks in advance for your responses. I'm the owner of an ecommerce site that sells custom candles. www.prometheancandle.com in case anyone wants to take a peak. I've become somewhat of an expert on all-things-candles over the past 4 years and I am thinking about starting a candle related blog. My question is this. Should I build this blog on the ecommerce site itself, say @ www.prometheancandle.com/blog.php, or should I devote a separate site to answering candle related question, history of candles, etc? At first, I was thinking that the blog should remain on the ecommerce site so readers would have easy access to the shop to be able to purchase products. But then it occurred to me that people who may be interested in reading up on candle history, candle making, meditation & candles, etc., may not want to go to an obviously ecommerce site to do that. I know Google values informational sites more than ecommerce sites (at least I think they do), so that encourages me to lean towards the separate site. Well, I may have just answered this question myself, but I'd definitely be interested to hear feedback and opinions. Thanks so much guys and I look forward to hearing from you.
Content Development | | Devynn0 -
Duplicate Pages Different Content
Will duplicate pages different content hurt rankings/seo E-commerce Site is plugin style with WYSIWYG editor allowing for full customization, all pages are setup with basic default content. Ive created custom pages with content/keywords to begin seo on them I have two pages www.domain.com/sports/hockey and www.domain.com/nhl-tickets The first url is default, with a single H1tag, + Default Meta+Title tags, the second is the content rich page, and structured properly, both of which show up on the site, should I block the first url from displaying at all? The reason I am asking is because ive also setup breadcrumb links, which makes all of these category url's accessible on the site, I cannot edit breadcrumb links, we can either have them there or remove them. Thank you Very Much!!
Content Development | | TP_Marketing0 -
Panda and Thin Content
Hi Guys, I have a quick question. We have a website and in the wake of Panda, we are worried about our video news section. We produce about 10 videos news a month on a templated page and beneath it is a small extract of the words spoken in the video. The text below each video is about 180 words each. Currently the video news section makes up and 1/5 of the content on the site. I.e Out of 500 pages, we have about 100 video news articles. Should I be worried about being wacked by Panda for this? Can I tell Google this is a news section?
Content Development | | VividLime0 -
Duplicate content - 6 websites, 1 IP. Is the #1 site knocked down too?
Yes I know, running multiple websites on 1 IP isn't smart. 6 Websites with duplicate content on 1 IP is even worse. It's a technical issue we can't solve quickly. Thing is, our #1 website, which has the highest DA and PR, was the first website with all this content. All other websites we're running were launched a few months, and some a few years, later. All content was copied from the #1 website. I'd say the other websites would get knocked down by Google, because they duplicated the content. Google should see that our #1 website was the first that uploaded this content. Therefore our #1 website should rank normally. Questions is: What does Google think of duplicate content when all websites are on 1 IP? Is, or will our #1 website get punished as well?
Content Development | | Webprint0 -
What is the best practice for using the same content on two pages?
I have two websites in a very similar niche(s)...I have good unique content article that I would like to use on both sites because it adds value to the visitor experience.. Example: Science of Colors would be very useful for my seattle house painting paint colors page. I want to have content so they do not need to leave the site to navigate to second site. Would the identical content trigger a penalty or would it be crawled, ignored, and not indexed. Does having a rel=authorship on one site trump the site..Or is it a pile of BAD.
Content Development | | johnshearer0