Opinions on Boilerplate Content
-
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!
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Re-using content
Hi, I've just sold the domain for a website, so I'm free to re-purpose the content over to another website I own. How can I make sure that Gg doesn't deem it as duplicate? Do I need to let Gg naturally realise that the 'original' website no longer has the content on it? Do I need to hold-off putting the content live again? Should I notify Gg by-way of a de-index request, etc (assuming the domain won't incur any difficulty if I do this)? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | newstd1000 -
About duplicate content
We have to products: - loan for a new car
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KBC
- load for a second hand car Except for title tag, meta desc and H1, the content is of course very similmar. Are these pages considered as duplicate content? https://new.kbc.be/product/lenen/voertuig/autolening-tweedehands-auto.html
https://new.kbc.be/product/lenen/voertuig/autolening-nieuwe-auto.html thanks for the advice,0 -
Many pages small unique content vs 1 page with big content
Dear all, I am redesigning some areas of our website, eurasmus.com and we do not have clear what is the best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eurasmus.com
option to follow. In our site, we have a city area i.e: www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla which we are going
to redesign and a guide area where we explain about the city, etc...http://eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla/guide/
all with unique content. The thing is that at this point due to lack of resources, our guide is not really deep and we believe like this it does not
add extra value for users creating a page with 500 characters text for every area (transport...). It is not also really user friendly.
On the other hand, this pages, in long tail are getting some results though is not our keyword target (i.e. transport in sevilla)
our keyword target would be (erasmus sevilla). When redesigning the city, we have to choose between:
a)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> with all the content one one page about 2500 characters unique.
b)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> With better amount of content and a nice redesign but keeping
the guide pages. What would you choose? Let me know what you think. Thanks!0 -
Cross Domain duplicate content...
Does anyone have any experience with this situation? We have 2 ecommerce websites that carry 90% of the same products, with mostly duplicate product descriptions across domains. We will be running some tests shortly. Question 1: If we deindex a group of product pages on Site A, should we see an increase in ranking for the same products on Site B? I know nothing is certain, just curious to hear your input. The same 2 domains have different niche authorities. One is healthcare products, the other is general merchandise. We've seen this because different products rank higher on 1 domain or the other. Both sites have the same Moz Domain Authority (42, go figure). We are strongly considering cross domain canonicals. Question 2 Does niche authority transfer with a cross domain canonical? In other words, for a particular product, will it rank the same on both domains regardless of which direction we canonical? Ex: Site A: Healthcare Products, Site B: General Merchandise. I have a health product that ranks #15 on site A, and #30 on site B. If I use rel=canonical for this product on site B pointing at the same product on Site A, will the ranking be the same if I use Rel=canonical from Site A to Site B? Again, best guess is fine. Question 3: These domains have similar category page structures, URLs, etc, but feature different products for a particular category. Since the pages are different, will cross domain canonicals be honored by Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC1 -
About robots.txt for resolve Duplicate content
I have a trouble with Duplicate content and title, i try to many way to resolve them but because of the web code so i am still in problem. I decide to use robots.txt to block contents that are duplicate. The first Question: How do i use command in robots.txt to block all of URL like this: http://vietnamfoodtour.com/foodcourses/Cooking-School/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | magician
http://vietnamfoodtour.com/foodcourses/Cooking-Class/ ....... User-agent: * Disallow: /foodcourses ( Is that right? ) And the parameter URL: h
ttp://vietnamfoodtour.com/?mod=vietnamfood&page=2
http://vietnamfoodtour.com/?mod=vietnamfood&page=3
http://vietnamfoodtour.com/?mod=vietnamfood&page=4 User-agent: * Disallow: /?mod=vietnamfood ( Is that right? i have folder contain module, could i use: disallow:/module/*) The 2nd question is: Which is the priority " robots.txt" or " meta robot"? If i use robots.txt to block URL, but in that URL my meta robot is "index, follow"0 -
Http and https duplicate content?
Hello, This is a quick one or two. 🙂 If I have a page accessible on http and https count as duplicate content? What about external links pointing to my website to the http or https page. Regards, Cornel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Duplicate content on sub-domains?
I have 2 subdamains intented for 2 different countries (Colombia and Venezuela) ve.domain.com and co.domain.com. The site it's an e-commerce with over a million products available so they have the same page with the same content on both sub-domains....the only differences are the prices a payment options. Does google take that as duplicate content? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0