Duplicate content

[cavendish]

My question is about duplicate content identified on my site by Moz

The pages identified as duplicates come from different areas of the site, different categories etc.
I realise the pages dont have much difference between them but would these pages be considered close enough to be duplicates

http://www.youlesmotorcycles.com/clothing-male/reflective-clothing-non-tri

http://www.youlesmotorcycles.com/accessories/luggage-hard

[Linda-Vassily]

Duplicate content does not have to involve pages that are grouped together. You can even have cross-domain duplicate content.

There is not a direct penalty for duplicate content. The issue is that when Google sees pages (wherever they may be) that appear to be the same, it will choose which one to index, omitting the others.

So as Andy says, when pages are being evaluated for duplicate content, it is best to be aware of very similar pages so you can take steps to distinguish them, if you want them each to rank.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

...it wont harm us for sure.

Well, being aware of it, you can make it better - that then will do things both for the user experience and Google.

Just be aware that there is a Panda refresh imminent. That will look at thin content (amongst other factors). Anything you can do to make your pages better will be good.

-Andy

[cavendish]

Hi Andy

thanks for the quick reply, tbh we have only just started to monitor the site ( using moz ) so we have no real historical data on SERPs but my feeling is that its not harming us particularly. The concern came when moz highlighted it as a high priority issue.

I was also unsure that seeming unrelated pages were grouped together but I guess thats just the way Moz does it when it scans

The product and categories are updated daily by a feed which explains the lack of content and we are addressing that now - its a good point you raise - it wont harm us for sure .

andy

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Would Google see them as duplicate? Probably, but I can't see it as something that is much of a problem. Will crawlers identify it as an 'issue'? Most certainly - and I suspect MOZ isn't the only one that would.

More often than not, these are only 'issues' that you should be aware of. It is much better to be aware of something than it being missed, so they all tend to err on the side of caution and pick up lower levels of dupe content.

That said, there is nothing wrong with adding some content to those pages. It can only do good things for you.

Have you seen any drop in the SERPs to suggest problems with those pages?

-Andy