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
-
Tens of duplicate homepages indexed and blocked later: How to remove from Google cache?
Hi community, Due to some WP plugin issue, many homepages indexed in Google with anonymous URLs. We blocked them later. Still they are in SERP. I wonder whether these are causing some trouble to our website, especially as our exact homepages indexed. How to remove these pages from Google cache? Is that the right approach? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Sub-domain with spammy content and links: Any impact on main website rankings?
Hi all, One of our sub-domains is forums. Our users will be discussing about our product and many related things. But some of the users in forum are adding a lot of spammy content everyday. I just wonder whether this scenario is ruining our ranking efforts of main website? A sub domain with spammy content really kills the ranking of main website? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
Duplicate Product Pages On Niche Site
I have a main site, and a niche site that has products for a particular category. For example, Clothing.com is the main site, formalclothing.com is the niche site. The niche site has about 70K product pages that have the same content (except for navigation links which are similar, but not dupliated). I have been considering shutting down the niche site, and doing a 301 to the category of the main site. Here are some more details: The niche sites ranks fairly well on Yahoo and Bing. Much better than the main site for keywords relevant to that category. The niche site was hit with Penguin, but doesn't seem to have been effected much by Panda. When I analyze a product page on the main site using copyscape, 1-2 pages of the niche site do show, but NOT that exact product page on the niche site. Questions: Given the information above, how can I gauge the impact the duplicate content is having if any? Is it a bad idea to do a canonical tag on the product pages of the niche site, citing the main site as the original source? Any other considerations aside from duplicate content or Penguin issue when deciding to 301? Would you 301 if this was your site? Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseseo0 -
Duplicate pages in language versions, noindex in sitemap and canonical URLs in sitemap?
Hi SEO experts! We are currently in the midst of reducing our amount of duplicate titles in order to optimize our SEO efforts. A lot of the "duplicate titles" come from having several language versions of our site. Therefore, I am wondering: 1. If we start using "" to make Google (and others) aware of alternative language versions of a given site/URL, how big a problem will "duplicate titles" then be across our domains/site versions? 2. Is it a problem that we in our sitemap include (many) URL's to pages that are marked with noindex? 3. Are there any problems with having a sitemap that includes pages that includes canonical URL's to other pages? Thanks in advance!
Algorithm Updates | | TradingFloor.com0 -
Using a sites custom code for multiple websites: good or bad?
Is it bad to utilize a custom codebase for multiple websites? Does that play a factor within Google? Also, what about hosting sites with the same custom codebase on the same dedicated server?
Algorithm Updates | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
How to content marketing: Should my blog posts link to my sales page?
Hi, I've been doing a weekly blog making sure that each blog post contains my money keywords in the text, sometimes in h2 tags etc. My blog posts never contain any links to my actual sales page. Should I link each blog post to my sale page or is it overdoing it? Will internal linking of all my blog posts to my sales page will improve its page authority or have any SEO benefits? What about using exact match anchor text on these internal links? I couldn't find any resource online about this matter. Thank you for your opinion and help! -Marc
Algorithm Updates | | marcandre0 -
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