Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, is it a problem?
-
Hi,
If i use same terms of use and privacy policy content across my websites, does it amounts to duplicate content issues? Does it affect my websites in any manner?
Regards
-
Duplicate content is one of many hundreds of factors. If you have a very well crafted site, highly optimized, and with a very strong inbound link profile, but only a couple pages (ones that are not highly relevant to your primary topical focus) are duplicate, the potential negative impact on your overall rankings will be minimal.
This is true for most SEO factors. If any single factor has a flaw, but it's not a flaw that applies to the whole site, that single factor is going to have minimum impact on the overall site.
-
You can do almost anything you wish on a "noindex" tagged page. You are telling the search engine bot to exclude the page from the search index, so the page should not affect your ranking.
The reason your site's # of pages is a factor, is your overall site is viewed as a whole. If you have a basic site with 10 pages, and there is a problem with 1 of the pages having duplicate content, then 10% of your site is affected, and this can impact how the search engine views your site. If your site hosted a forums with 10k pages, then that 1 page would represent 0.001 of your site, so the impact would not have any real effect.
-
Thanks for the helpful reply Alan! Can you please explain this - "If it's only a few pages, sure, duplicate content there could have an impact". How duplicate content issues vary between small and big sites? I was under the impression that number of pages do not have any influence in duplicate content.
Is it okay to use the same privacy policy and terms of use across different websites as long as i noindex,follow them?
-
How big is your site? If it's only a few pages, sure, duplicate content there could have an impact. But in reality, I expect your site is not primarily made up of keyword phrases that either of those pages would be optimized for, and that you have more than a few pages. If so, any "negative" aspect would not be severe.
Having said that, it really is best to just use a robots meta tag set to noindex,follow (my preference instead of blocking completely in the robots.txt file.
-
Thanks for the reply Ryan! But if i don't block it via robots.txt file or noindex tag, will it affect my site negatively? I mean the overall site
-
I would recommend blocking pages such as privacy policy, terms of use, legal, etc. It is unlikely these pages would ever bring traffic to your site. Even if they did, it is not going to be the quality traffic you desire.
In robots.txt you can add
Disallow: /pages/privacy/
substitute your local path for /pages/privacy/
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
-
Are FAQ's Pages Still Useful?
I know there has been a lot of discussion lately about FAQs pages and I'm wondering when and if they are still warranted useful and what if they have positive or negative effects on page rankings. Regards, John Brown
Content Development | | JohnBrown75
Essay Writer0 -
Can I use expired domain content on My Blog
Hello Expert, I wanted to know, can I use expired domain content on my blog channel. I have done many searches on google but couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Please help me to find out this.
Content Development | | vijay77960 -
Blockquote, q, cite, when to use it all?
I'm asking this question with the full recognition that the issue may be a little contentious and possibly unresolved, but I would like the opinions of those here anyway. When I quote another article in mine I always use either blockquote or q. (q is an inline version of blockquote). But I recently learned you can add a cite attribution to those tags. Like so: I have a dream... or
Content Development | | eglove
<q cite="www.example.com">He who doesn't ask himself...</q> But these links don't show up anywhere, only in the code. To be as ethical as possible, I also put in an anchor link. That also is my first concern. Can putting the same link twice essentially right next to one another cause issues? To add to the complexity, I've also been researching the <cite>tag. And it's history is a little... well... rocky. It seems as though the current standard is to use either blockquote or q and then add in cite as a footer to it. Like this:</cite> They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed! <footer>Douglass, F. (1999). <cite>[The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass]([link to book (or article where appropriate)])</cite>. Oxford: Oxford University Press,</footer> Notice the cite tag is only around the link to the item in question. Not the entire footer. Also note that the footer is inside the blockquote, thus it is not meant to be at the bottom of the page. So IF this is the standard way to do things, it answers my first question. But is it? And can the use of the footer tag confuse search engines? Ugh, crazy all over the place question, I know. But I'm struggling to find the right way to handle quotations in a way that is both academic, and SEO friendly. Start from the beginning if you must. 🙂1 -
Duplicate content between my web and Youtube
I have a web with 90 vídeos hosted in my Youtube channel and each video have an description in single url, but Youtube videos have no description. If I copy description from my web and paste to Youtube description, this is duplicate content for Google ?
Content Development | | VisualService1 -
Wordpress Blog Pages, Duplicate Title Tag
Anyone have any experience in fixing the duplicate Title tag on a Wordpress blog multiple pages Basically the title tag remains the same on the pages /Blog/ /Blog/Page/2/ /Blog/Page/3/ My good friend Yoast Plugin doesn't seem to of resolved this (Unless i have missed something?) I don't really see this to be effecting anything and wouldn't of through it would either, but it would be nice to not see the notification within Moz site crawls and campaigns etc, its more of a cosmetic problem Any solutions ? Thanks James
Content Development | | Antony_Towle0 -
Can I post my MailChimp articles on my blog without getting hit for duplicate content?
I would like to post my newsletters on my blog, but am afraid of duplicate content since you can click a link on the MailChimp email blast to view the Newsletter online. Is this considered dup content?
Content Development | | RoxBrock0 -
Duplicate Content
I have a service based client that is interested in optimizing his website for all the services that he provides in all the locations that he provides them in. For example: Service 1, location 1 Service 1, location 2 Service 2, location 1 Service 2, location 2 He wants to essentially create an individual page for each of the above, but i'm concerned that he will be penalized for duplicate content. Each of the pages would have the keyword in the url, page title and within the main body of content. We would certainly alter the content somewhat, but not sure how much a difference this would make. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | embracedarrenhughes1 -
Duplicate Content behind a Paywall
We have a website that is publicly visible. This website has content. We'd like to take that same content, put it on another website, behind a paywall. Since Google will not be able to crawl those pages behind the paywall is there any risk to ua doing this? Thanks! Mike
Content Development | | FOTF_DigitalMarketing0