Templated content = duplicate content?
-
I'm curious where the line is drawn for "duplicate content" by the search engines. Obviously the same article, or even the same article with minor edits, can and should be detected as duplicate.
I have a use case where there is a database of similar, but not duplicate, content that changes as time passes. I want to serve this content up via html template but don't want the 1000 pages to be considered duplicates of each other.
Example: Imagine local weather. You could create a template for city name, longitude, latitude, altitude, and current weather conditions. The values for all fields would be different for each of the 1000 database entries (cities) and one of the "current weather conditions" would change frequently (hourly, let's say).
Now, if I have a nice heirarchical index pages (first one maybe points to 50 state sub-pages, and each state page points to 20 city pages) that point to the 1000 city-specific pages, would the city-specific pages be considered 'duplicate' since they are based on the same HTML template but all have different values in key areas? Does the answer change based on the % of the template (or visible text) that changes for each city?
My goal is to get these 1000 subpages as part of my site, have them indexable, and have them each flow a little bit of link juice to my home page.
Best practices? What should I be careful of?
Thanks!
-
I'd like to know the answer too...
Our page is an e-commerce site, and Google sometimes gives the duplicate content reports for pages that don't match, but haven't got much of unique content. Thought maybe you solved the problem?
-
Don't you get any duplicate content messages at Google webmaster tools?
-
Hi Mike,
I'm wondering what you decided to do here, and if you have any interesting results that you'd be willing to share with the Q&A community. Thanks!
-
Figured it wasn't weather based... just sticking with the theme.
How's that saying go... "The good thing about the internet is that you can always test it, the bad thing is that you are always testing."
-
It's a single site. It's not a weather app; I was using weather as an example. I have another (non-weather) data set that has similar characteristics -- 6 or 8 unique data points per item (a couple of which are dynamic and change as time passes). And several thousand of these items. I want to display them via template.
I guess I'll try it and see if Webmaster tools complains about dup content. Thanks for the ideas, guys...
-
Often wondered myself
i think google makke the right choice. they would of thought about this and i am sure they get it right.i have much the same thing on one of my sites, and they rank quite well, so i dont think they are seen as duplicates.
-
Excellent point. The more unique the content the higher the value.
-
Hi Mike,
This is an interesting question. Depending on the nature of the content, you might want to try to get user generated content on those pages to make them more unique and valuable.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
If you are running this on a single site then I would say per your example that you have enough unique variables that it wouldn't be considered duplicate content on your website. Giving each City, State, Weather, on a page should solve your problem. As long as the titles and headers of the pages are not all the same. But the only real way to know would be to test it. Validate it with webmaster tools, it will tell you if your pages are too similar.And if you do pull this off let me know. I am always interested in GEO specific content for our pest control service areas.
The problem I see you running into is creating enough unique content so that it's not duplicate content from other weather sites. Maybe run it against a copyscape.com query. That should let you know if the weather info is unique enough. I would test this on a small scale prior to launching the entire project. Just hand create 10 pages and run it against copyscape.
Now if you are trying to create a content generator for mulitple websites based on this same data set then you may run into duplicate content issues. ...But there may still be some value in this.
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
-
Adding content to an eCommerce site
We're creating buyers guides for the each category on our ecommerce website and we're not sure where to place the content for maximum impact. Option a: place the content on the category page beneath the product listings Option b: place the content on our blog and created links between the content and category page Which option do you think would be most effective/ user friendly? Any thoughts, help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks, Alick
Link Building | | Alick3000 -
Duplicate Content Link Juice
Hello SEO Community, So sometimes I will pitch one guest post to multiple outlets and if multiple reply positively, I will tell all but the single most authoritative site that the article is being published elsewhere and it won't be unique for their site. But some don't mind and still post anyway. I definitely don't mind because it just means that more people will read my article and more sites will be linking back to me. What are the implications on the link juice from the most authoritative site? What about the other ones (which are still authoritative, just not as much)? Is there any reason I should explicitly tell them not to post if I know it will appear somewhere else? Thanks much,
Link Building | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Few questions regarding onsite content?
1. How important is having the keywords you are targeting on the page? Lets say you rank position 10 for 'Plumbing Services London' but you don't actually use the word 'London' at all in the page copy, what kind of effect could you expect if you added the word in the content? Bit of a silly question really, I know it would have some effect but how important is it really? 2. What kind of effect would adding a blog with lets say 500 words of great content twice a week have on rankings? If you anchor text linked out of the copy would this alone help with ranking or is the reason for adding a blog to just use it as link bait to pull in more links, thus rankings are only effected when the blog starts to gain links?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Curating Content. used to avoid, but now i'm having second thoughts
It's really hitting me now, because content curating is extremely common in a lot of other forms of media. I always avoided it because I didn't know the extent of any negatives that I might see from the search engines (duplicate content). Does anybody else curate content for their blogs? The main problem that I am having is that I just don't have enough time to publish the amount of content that I need. Outsourcing is the best alternative, and quite frankly, unless your high school English teacher needs extra money, it really isn't a very good one. Basically, i'm looking at content curating as a really good way to publish a lot of content, on more topics, a lot easier. What extent do you consider reasonable? How do you go about creating your content? What would you say is the easiest way to create content efficiently?
Link Building | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Publish content on current domain for content boost or new domain for links?
I have about 1000 unique and organically generated articles. My quote compare business has had briefs submitted by clients for over two years. The content has only been accessible to registered members. I want to polish it ASAP. Is it better to publish the content on the existing website in a sub folder or set up a new website to publish the content and have every article link back to the main website? Content is around 300 words x 1000.
Link Building | | designquotes0 -
Risks with sharing my original content with other sites
We write our own unique content to our blog a few times a week. The content is written by professionals (doctors and such) and carries a bit of authority. We periodically get requests from other websites who want to post our content on their blog. We also find that some people will just go ahead and use our exact content (often with a link attribution), without asking permission. Is there any risk of us not getting credit for being the original source of the content if others use it in its entirety?Are there other risks? And more importantly, what should we do to make sure we're getting the SEO credit we deserve? Some ideas which have been discussed that may or may not have credence: Only let others use the exact content well after we've been crawled, so we'll be seen as the first publisher Only let people cite the introductory paragraph, with a link allowing them to read more at our site (with good anchor text) Require people to summarize our story, with a link for the full story Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!
Link Building | | OneMedical0 -
Duplicate content how bad is it?
I have a magento webshop and some of products have more than one link. E.g. wolverine apprentice it has these two links http://www.urbanclothing.dk/maerker-1/wolverine/wolverine-apprentice-6-tan-mens.html and http://www.urbanclothing.dk/wolverine-apprentice-6-tan-mens.html Is that going to ruin my chances on ranking high on Google? If yes what should I do about it ? And was does Linking Root Domains and Page Authority mean? I fount it under the keyword ranking section.
Link Building | | UCDK0 -
UGC content sites not hit by Panda?
I know many social and article sites (hubpages, ezinearticles, many low quality article sites, etc.) were hit by Panda. Many higher quality sites that accept user-submitted content were not hit. High quality blogs that accept guest posts is one example. I believe Squidoo fared pretty well. Any other sites that accept user-generated content (with links) that still rank well?
Link Building | | AdamThompson0