Are all duplicate contents bad?
-
We were badly hit by Panda back in January 2012. Unfortunately, it is only now that we are trying to recover back.
CASE 1:
We develop software products. We send out 500-1000 word description about the product to various download sites so that they can add to their product listing. So there are several hundred download sites with same content.How does Google view this? Did Google penalize us due to this reason?
CASE 2:
In the above case the product description does not match with any content on our website. However, there are several software download sites that copy and paste the content from our website as the product description. So in this case, the duplicate content match with our website.
How does Google view this? Did Google penalize us due to this reason?
Along with all the download sites, there are also software piracy & crack sites that have the duplicate content.
So, should I remove duplicate content only from the software piracy & crack sites or also from genuine download sites?
Does Google reject all kind of duplicate content? Or it depends on who hosts the duplicate content?
Confused Please help.
-
It is tricky. As Michael said it is important to get your content indexed first, which can help identify you as the source. Google doesn't always do a great job of that. Generally, I don't worry too much about Case 1, but in your case, it can be tougher. The problem is that many download sites can have very high authority and could start outranking you for these product descriptions. If that happens, it's unlikely you'd be penalized, but you could be filtered out or knocked down the rankings, which might feel like a penalty.
Here's the thing, with Case 1, though. If these download sites are simply outranking you, but you're distributing product, is it so awful? I think you have to look at the trade-off through the lens of your broader business goals.
Case 2 is tougher, since there's not a lot you can do about it, short of DMCA takedowns. You've got to hope Google sorts it out. Again, getting in front of it and getting your content in the index quickly is critical.
If you were hit by Panda, I'd take a hard look at anything on your own site that could be harming you. Are you spinning out variations of your own content? Are you creating potentially duplicate URLs? Are you indexing a ton of paginated content (internal searches, for example). You may find that the external duplicates are only part of your Panda problem - if you can clean up what you control, you'll be much better off. I have an extensive duplicate content write-up here:
-
For all new content it is important to get indexed fast. There is the scenario that if your site is crawled infrequently another site may get that copy indexed first and by default is viewed as theirs. So with any new content I would post on social media as quickly as possible - G+, Twitter etc to get noticed and to mark as yours. G+ author attribute will help.
-
Hi Gautam,
Good questions, it really hard to say what Google determines as duplicate content so this will just be my hunch on your issue. As I have experienced Google won't 'penalize' you as you're the owner of the content and you can't be the victim of other people stealing or copying your content. Also if you have provided these sites with your content. Mostly because you're often not in charge of the content management on somebodies elses site.
Hope this helps a bit!
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
-
Our partners are using our website content for their websites. Do such websites hurt us due to duplicate content?
Hi all, Many of our partners across the globe are using the same content from our website and hosting on their websites including header tags, text, etc. So I wonder will these websites are hurting our website due to this duplicate content. Do we need to ask our partners to stop using our content? Any suggestions? What if some unofficial partners deny to remove the content? best way to handle? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Bad Grammar's Effect on Rankings
Mozzers, I have a client who's brand style guide dictates that they write in all lowercase letters. Do you think this will hurt rankings? Nails
Algorithm Updates | | matt.nails1 -
Does cached duplicate content hurts seo by Google
If we have duplicate content or pages cached in Google which has been indexed months back, still it hurts the original pages? Old URLs with cache can be seen now in Google when we search for the same URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Fresh content..how important to SERP position?
I've heard that fresh content helps boost your position in the serps. If i wrote all new unique content on some of my pages that havent been changed in several years, would i see a boost in the rank? If so, how many positions?
Algorithm Updates | | Ron100 -
Content vs articles vs blogs is there a difference?
I was wondering is there really a difference between website content, articles or blogs and most important do search engines see it differently? My website is pretty much an ecommerce site and most of my long text is on my blog. The only other pages that have much content is the homepage, all the other pages may have a paragraph. I am just wondering if i need to make more actual pages with text/content or is having my blogs good enough? I am no expert in seo and just wondering if i am wasting too much money on getting blogs written or should i get more content. Content being a page called commercial printing and blog being a page called why do do i need commercial printing? Also would it matter to the users who find the site? Would the users come to my site just looking for information or would they actually think of me for the service?
Algorithm Updates | | topclass0 -
When to remove bad links.
Hi everyone. We were hit on the 5th Oct with manual penalties - after building some good links and building good content we saw some gains in our SERPS, not to where they were, but they are definately improving for some low competition keywords. In this case would people recommend still trying to remove bad links? We have audited our links and identified ones which seem spammy. We were going to go through a step by step process, emailing bad link providers where possible, and then sending a disavow for any links we were not able to remove. If we have started to see gains through other means is it wise in people's opinion to start contacting google? We watched Matt Cutts video on disavow usage and he states not to use it unless in extreme situations, so we don't want to 'wake the beast'. Many thanks. James.
Algorithm Updates | | Quime0 -
Need some Real Insight into our SEO Issue and Content Generation
We have our site www.practo.com We have our blog as blog.practo.com We plan to have our main site in a months time from now as www.ray.practo.com The Issues - I will then need to direct all my existing traffic from www.practo.com to www.ray.practo.com Keeping in mind SEO and also since I will be generating new content via our Wordpress instance what are the best ways to do this so that google does not have difficulty in find out content 1. Would it be good if I put the Wordpress instance as ray.practo.com/ blog(wordpress instance comes in here in the directory) / article-url 2.Would it be better with www.practo.com / ray / blog/article-url I am using wordpress to roll out all our new SEO based content on various keywords and topics for which we want traffice - primary reasons are since we needed a content generation cms platform so that we dont have to deal with html pages and every time publish those content pages via a developer. Is the above - what soever I am planning to do in the correct manner keeping SEO in mind. Any suggestions are welcome. I seriously need to know writing seo based content on wordpress instance and have them in the urls is that a good idea? Or is only html a good idea. But we need some cms to be there so that content writers can write content independently. Please guide accordingly. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | shanky10 -
Duplicate content penalisation?
Hi We are pulling in content snippets from our product blog to our category listing pages on our ecommerce site to provide fresh, relevant content which is working really well. What I am wondering is if we are going to get penalised for dupicate content as both our our blog and ecommerce site are on the same ip address? If so would moving the blog to a separate server and / or a separate domain name be a wise move? Thanks very much
Algorithm Updates | | libertybathrooms0