Can I have the same item description on Amazon, eBay and my website?
-
Hi guys,
After looking on the Internet and reading the Learn SEO section on this site, I've realised that Google doesn't like duplicate content and penalises it, whether that's duplication on your own site or of another site's content.
We are an online retailer currently selling on different platforms including Amazon, eBay and our own ecommerce webstore.
Is it okay to have the same item description (i.e. main page copy) on each of these sites, or will our search rankings get negatively impacted?
Thank you in advance, I have researched on this issue also but I couldn't find a concrete answer.
- Tanay
-
- Depending on the authority of your website depends how quickly it gets indexed/ranked
For example:
-
- I have seen stuff on Quora get indexed by Google in about 15 minutes
- If you have a new site, it could take a couple of weeks
- Personally if I'm planning on launching a new product I'd post in the info on my site a couple of weeks before it's ready to launch with a coming soon banner. This is good for two (2) resons:
-
- You are generating buzz
- You are making sure Google knows your site published the content before anyone else.
- Is duplicate content an problem?
Yes.
If you get indexed first, is it your problem?
I'd say no
-
Pravin -
You definitely CAN... but that's not always the best idea. We do car dealer websites, and we feed our dealers' inventories out to hundreds of online classified sites. Many of our dealers also use eBay motors. Our system allows them to either write a single description that goes to every property, or separate descriptions for website, eBay, and classifieds.
You should be able to do the same thing with your site. You should always have a bit more detail and depth on your own website, but if your system doesn't allow for you to do so, you'll probably still be ok. The search engines are smart enough to realize that the different online stores and classified sites are all selling the same product (and won't assign a dupe content penalty).
Remember - you should always look at your website and create content/descriptions that your customers (and potential customers) will find the most useful and relevant. Write for people, not for search engines. Plus, you've got different audiences on the other sales platforms, so unique descriptions might help with conversions, based on the audience you're trying to reach. BUT, if you're not able to, you should be ok with using the same description across the board.
-
I would try and vary them if possible... Spending the most time on your sites product description.
This could also help your listings / website stand out from the rest.
-
I've used Amazon and eBay very often back then and between Amazon and eBay it shouldn't matter having the same description.
However, your own website should have more in depth details and should not be exactly similar to Amazon and eBay. Because although if you post the description own your site first, Amazon and eBay might just rank higher than you just because.
But from my experience, products generally have the same descriptions and details. If you create some sort of slight variation, it shouldn't be negatively effecting SEO.
My suggestion is keep Amazon and eBay same just because they rank well in the first place. For your own site, make slight variations.
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
-
Meta descriptions
When writing a meta description is it ok to use keywords that are not on the page or site itself?
Algorithm Updates | | aplnzoctober181 -
Duplicate website pages indexed: Ranking dropped. Does Google checks the duplicate domain association?
Hi all, Our duplicate website which is used for testing new optimisations got indexed and we dropped in rankings. But I am not sure whether this is exact reason as it happened earlier too where I don't find much drop in rankings. Also I got replies in the past that it'll not really impact original website but duplicate website. I think this rule applies to the third party websites. But if our own domain has exact duplicate content; will Google knows that we own the website from any other way we are associated like IP addresses and servers, etc..to find the duplicate website is hosted by us? I wonder how Google treats duplicate content from third party domains and own domains. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google stopped showing time frame for the cached results of the websites; Why? Any alternatives?
Hi Moz community If we Google "site:website.com"; it'll list the cached pages from the website. And we used to check them on required date range like how and which pages got indexed. But date range is not working now and the results are missing the pages which got indexed at the selected date range. Any idea why Google does this? Any alternatives to find the recently indexed pages? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Duplicate website got indexed: Caused rank drop?
Hi all, We have replica of our website with exact pages and content. That website got indexed by mistake and allowed for bots for more than 10 days. Our ranking dropped now and we moved from 2nd page to 5th page. But previously we had this happened and didn't hurt much. We got punished now? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
How to follow up Google search in a Joomla website
Hello ! I'm facing a stupid issue but cannot solve it. Google Analytics can track the seach into a website. When I try to activate it I need to add some more parameters that I do not know. http://awesomescreenshot.com/03f1bnau8d Has anyone ever tried to configure Google analytics search for a Joomla website ? Tks a lot !
Algorithm Updates | | AymanH0 -
Website taken a hit?
We have recently (yesterday 12<sup>th</sup> April) taken a hit for our main keywords it seems that there is no constant fall but it seems to be the most competitive words as anything that ranked purely on content still seems to rank which makes me assume that we have just lost a lot of power from links (are SEO did build quite a few links from article sites he also built a few blog network links which we did not know till we got the webmaster message 3 weeks ago (24<sup>th</sup> may) and we have made him remove them all but some still show which a) he can’t contact or b) were scrapers). But on the other hand we still have decent on site content and some good links from graphic design blogs (review articles) which would suggest a penalty as some sites with poor links and poor on site content are outranking us for a couple of our good keywords. I cannot decide if this is a penalty, keyword anchor text penalty (this is wiping more power out than the bad links) or just devaluation of links (but as said before our good links are still much more powerful than the competitors out ranking us and with our content we should easily not have lost many places). If I was going to come up with an idea it would be like the bad links have taken twice there power away from the site, so our on site content is still good but compared to medium on site and crap links they are out ranking us. (we did use a lot of anchor text with keywords in) If this is the case if we build gooad quality review links, press releases and make them more natural not go for normal link building – articles ect would this help and has anyone ever dealt with this before and have any idea how to know what is happing and how long it might take to recover.
Algorithm Updates | | BobAnderson0 -
Are we penalized if our meta description is longer than 150-160 characters?
I've read on other SEO sites that description can be 350 characters or 60 words long. Some of my descriptions are a little bit over those numbers. Will Search Engines stop crawling through the description at after a certain amount of characters, or will it completely ignore it if it's too long, hence hurting my site's SEO performance?
Algorithm Updates | | jmbuytaert0 -
Shouldn’t Google always rank a website for its own unique, exact +10 word content such as a whole sentence?
Hello fellow SEO's, I'm working with a new client who owns a property related website in the UK.
Algorithm Updates | | Qasim_IMG
Recently (May onwards) they have experienced significant drops in nearly all non domain/brand related rankings. From page 1 to +5 or worse. Please see the attached webmaster tools traffic graph.
The 13th of June seemed to have the biggest drop (UK Panda update???) When we copy and paste individual +20 word sentences from within top level content Google does bring up exact results, the content is indexed but the clients site nearly always appears at the bottom of SERP's. Even very new or small, 3-4 page domains that have clearly all copied all of their content are out ranking the original content on the clients site. As I'm sure know, this is very annoying for the client! And this even happens when Google’s cache date (that appears next to the results) for the clients content is clearly older then the other results! The only major activity was the client utilising Google optimiser which redirects traffic to various test pages. These tests finished in June. Details about the clients website: Domain has been around for 4+ years The website doesn't have a huge amount of content, around 40 pages. I would consider 50% original, 20% thin and 30% duplicate (working on fixing this) There haven’t been any signicant sitewide or page changes. Webmaster tools show nothing abnormal or any errors messages (some duplicate meta/title tags that are being fixed) All the pages of the site are indexed by Google Domain/page authority is above average for the niche (around 45 in for the domain in OSE) There are no ads of any kind on the site There are no special scripts or anything fancy that could cause problems I can't seem to figure it out, I know the site can be improved but such a severe drop where even very weak domains are out ranking suggests a penalty of some sort? Can anyone help me out here? hxuSn.jpg0