Opinions on Boilerplate Content

[kirmeliux]

Howdy,

Ideally, uniqueness for every page's title, description, and content is desired. But when a site is very, very large, it becomes impossible. I don't believe our site can avoid boilerplate content for title tags or meta-descriptions. We will, however, markup the pages with proper microdata so Google can use this information as they please.

What I am curious about is boilerplate content repeated throughout the site for the purpose of helping the user, as well as to tell Google what the page is about (rankings).

For instance, this page and this page offer the same type of services, but in different areas. Both pages (and millions of others) offer the exact same paragraph on each page. The information is helpful to the user, but it's definitely duplicate content. All they've changed is the city name.

I'm curious, what's making this obvious duplicate content issue okay? The additional unique content throughout (in the form of different businesses), the small, yet obvious differences in on-site content (title tags clearly represent different locations), or just the fact that the site is HUGELY authorative and gets away with it?

I'm very curious to hear your opinions on this practice, potential ways to avoid it, and whether or not it's a passable practice for large, but new sites.

Thanks!

[EGOL]

The SEO of the site is probably fine.  The problem with the site is that it takes one page of content and smears it across dozens of thin content, duplicate content, cookie cutter pages.  The SEO is lipstick on a pig.

[kirmeliux]

Thanks again for the response, EGOL. It is appreciated.

Can you point to any examples of large-scale sites like this with better SEO for these pages? I mean, any site that targets every city, neighborhood, park, etc. with content like this should theoretically run into duplicate content and display thin result pages quite often.

And even so, these pages are helpful. I Google "restaurant + small cities near me" and Yelp pages come up, which benefit me.

Yelp is one of the biggest review sites on the web and their filtered search result pages are indexed and ranking ultra high all over the place. What are they doing so special?

This page and this page both offer nearly the same exact results, just shuffled a bit. Beyond simply being too big to get slapped, why is it okay when Yelp does this?

[EGOL]

I agree.  It is on a very thin line.  I believe that Google's Panda algo will eventually hit it.  I look at lots of site that people say lost traffic.  This one has a similar design and content Style.

[kirmeliux]

That's interesting. It seems to have been around for quite a while and ranks well. Of all the similar sites I've seen, Houzz seems to walk the thinnest line on bad-SEO though. Their filter creates nearly identical pages, all of which get indexed, and they have no canonicals for any of them and virtually the same on-page SEO as well. Not to mention the same blurbs across millions of pages, etc.

It's weird to me though that a reasonably targeted blurb is such bad business when the rest of the site is so helpful to users. One would think Google would allow it since the blurbs apply to each page and the "results" are the real meat and potatoes of the site.

[EGOL]

This site has lots of duplicate content from page to page and lots of thin content on a repeating template.   It will be hit by Panda.

[kirmeliux]

EGOL,

I think you're making unfair assumptions about our site. Each page visible to Google will have helpful information and content on the site. The one's that don't will not be "published" for Google or our users.

I assure you, the site will be worthwhile and helpful to the end user, especially as time progresses. In fact, if you read above, I am asking specifically about adding additional helpful content to the user, but trying to avoid DC issues by posting it throughout each site.

I am not trying to shortcut anything, I'm curious why some sites are able to seemingly circumvent SEO tenets and was hoping for a helpful discussion.

And again, I'll reiterate, I am not interested in boilerplate content to shortcut anything. It would be in addition to existing useful content. The boilerplate content on similar pages would also be beneficial to the end user. Using the examples above, I believe the small blurbs above _can _be helpful to the user. Do you agree?

Thanks for the response.

[EGOL]

The problem that you face is that you are trying to make a website with millions of pages for which you do not have adequate content.  You are trying to take shortcuts by using a cookiecutter instead of doing the work to make a worthy and unique website.

If you continue with your current business plan, I believe that Google will not treat your site very well.  These sites used to work in Google over ten years ago and at that time they were ingenious.  Today they are spam.

[kirmeliux]

The paragraph of helpful content is identical (beyond a city being swapped out) but it still helps their searches. If you tailor a search with one of their cities and a cousin keyword within the text, they pop-up on the front page usually. That's what I'm asking about. Why is Google ignoring this obvious DC?

I'm assuming the business listings are making the page unique enough to override the duplicate paragraph + the site is huge and has TONS of authority.

[alrockn]

They're not identical, and I notice many directories are set-up like this.  Two individual users with different interests would find unique information from both of these samples.  The only issue is how your competition has setup their page.  For instance, if someone is just targeting Phoenix, and really goes to town with unique information and links, that may rank better because they may be views as more of an authority on the subject.