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.
Percentage of duplicate content allowable
-
Can you have ANY duplicate content on a page or will the page get penalized by Google?
For example if you used a paragraph of Wikipedia content for a definition/description of a medical term, but wrapped it in unique content is that OK or will that land you in the Google / Panda doghouse?
If some level of duplicate content is allowable, is there a general rule of thumb ratio unique-to-duplicate content?
thanks!
-
I dont believe you have aproblem if you havea bit of duplicate content, google does not penilize you for duplicate content, it just dosent award you points for it.
-
That sounds like something Google will hate by default. Your problem there is page quantity to quality and uniqueness ratio.
-
It's quite difficult to provide the exact data as Google algorithm is Google's hidden treasure. Better to keep yourself safe by creating completely unique content, Referring to your example of Wikipedia definition, you can add something like " ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA ..... " while copying definition or adding reference links while copying any content from other sources.
Remember that Google is not only giving importance to unique content but it should be of high quality. That means the article should be innovative like a complete new thing & well researched, so it mustn't be of 200 or less words. So Google will compare the quality of the whole article with the copied content & then it'll decide whether it's a duplicate content article or not.
-
We recently launched a large 3500 page website that auto generates a sentence after we plug in statistical data in our database.
So the only unique content is a single sentence?
Within that sentence many of the words would need to be common as well. Consider a simple site that offered the population for any given location. "The population of [California] is [13 million] people."
In the above example only 3 words are unique. Maybe your pages are a bit more elaborate but it seems to me those pages are simply not indexable. What you can do is index the main page where users can enter the location they wish to learn about, but not each possible result (i.e. California).
Either add significantly more content, or only index the main page.
-
We recently launched a large 3500 page website that auto generates a sentence after we plug in statistical data in our database. All pages are relevant to users and provide more value than other results in serps, but i think a penalty is in place that the farmer update may have detected with a sort of auto-penalty against us.
I sent in a reconsideration request last week, the whole project is on hold until we get a response. I'm expecting a generic answer from them.
We are debating on either writing more unique content for every page or entering in more statistical data to run some cool correlations. The statistical data would be 3x more beneficial to the user I feel, but unique content is what Google seeks and a safer bet just to get us indexed properly.
-
We're currently observing a crumbling empire of websites with auto-generated content. Google is somehow able to understand how substantial your content is and devalue the page and even the whole site if it does not meet their criteria. This is especially damaging for sites who have say 10% of great unique content and 90% of their pages are generated via tagging, browsable search and variable driven paragraphs of text.
Having citations is perfectly normal but I would include reference section just in case.
-
You can have some duplicate content in the manner you mentioned above. It is a natural and expected part of the internet that existing sources of information will be utilized.
There is not any magic number which says "30% duplication is ok, but 31% is not". Google's algorithms are private and constantly changing. Use good sense to guide you as to whether your page is unique and offers value to users.
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
-
Canonical: Same content but different countries
I'm building a website that has content made for specific countries. The url format is: MyWebsite.com/<country name="">/</country> Some of the pages for <specific url="">are the same for different countries, the <specific url="">would be the same as well. The only difference would be the <country name="">.</country></specific></specific> How do I deal with canonical issues to avoid Google thinking I'm presenting the same content?
On-Page Optimization | | newbyguy0 -
How do I fix my portfolio causing duplicate content issues?
Hi, Im new to this whole duplicate content issue. I have a website, fatcatpaperie.com that I use the portofolio feature in Wordpress as my gallery for all my wedding invitations. I have a ton of duplicate content issues from this. I don't understand at all how to fix this. I'd appreciate any help! Below is an example of one duplicate content issue. They have slightly different names, different urls, different images and all have no text. But are coming up as duplicates. Would it be as easy as putting a different metadescription for each?? Thanks for the help! Rena | "Treasure" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/treasure-designers-fine-press 1 0 0 0 200 3 duplicates "Perennial" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/perennial-by-designers-fine-press 1 0 0 0 200 1 of 3 duplicates "Primrose" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/8675 1 0 0 0 200 2 of 3 duplicates "Catalina" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/catalina-designers-fine-press |
On-Page Optimization | | HonestSEOStudio0 -
What should I be shooting for for search visibility percentage?
Realistically - what's a "good" search visibility score? I'm working on a site that has been around less than a year. We are doing 3 blogs a week with carefully selected keywords. I know it will take time and lots of SEO work - but I'm interested in any ideas on what I should shoot for. Thanks for any thoughts! (Also not a local listing or anything - national search.)
On-Page Optimization | | mm19804 -
Duplicate Content - Blog Rewriting
I have a client who has requested a rewrite of 250 blog articles for his IT company. The blogs are dispersed on a variety of platforms: his own website's blog, a business innovation website, and an IT website. He wants to have each article optimised with keyword phrases and then posted onto his new website thrice weekly. All of this is in an effort to attract some potential customers to his new site and also to establish his company as a leader in its field. To what extent would I need to rewrite each article so as to avoid duplicating the content? Would there even be an issue if I did not rewrite the articles and merely optimised them with keywords? Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | StoryScout0 -
Duplicate Content for Men's and Women's Version of Site
So, we're a service where you can book different hairdressing services from a number of different salons (site being worked on). We're doing both a male and female version of the site on the same domain which users are can select between on the homepage. The differences are largely cosmetic (allowing the designers to be more creative and have a bit of fun and to also have dedicated male grooming landing pages), but I was wondering about duplicate pages. While most of the pages on each version of the site will be unique (i.e. [male service] in [location] vs [female service] in [location] with the female taking precedent when there are duplicates), what should we do about the likes of the "About" page? Pages like this would both be unique in wording but essentially offer the same information and does it make sense to to index two different "About" pages, even if the titles vary? My question is whether, for these duplicate pages, you would set the more popular one as the preferred version canonically, leave them both to be indexed or noindex the lesser version entirely? Hope this makes sense, thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Does schema.org assist with duplicate content concerns
The issue of duplicate content has been well documented and there are lots of articles suggesting to noindex archive pages in WordPress powered sites. Schema.org allows us to mark-up our content, including marking a components URL. So my question simply, is no-indexing archive (category/tag) pages still relevant when considering duplicate content? These pages are in essence a list of articles, which can be marked as an article or blog posting, with the url of the main article and all the other cool stuff the scheme gives us. Surely Google et al are smart enough to recognise these article listings as gateways to the main content, therefore removing duplicate content concerns. Of course, whether or not doing this is a good idea will be subjective and based on individual circumstances - I'm just interested in whether or not the search engines can handle this appropriately.
On-Page Optimization | | MarkCA0 -
Duplicate eCommerce Product Descriptions
I know that creating original product descriptions is best practices. What I don't understand is how other sites are able to generate significant traffic while still using duplicate product descriptions on all product pages. How are they not being penalized by Google?
On-Page Optimization | | mj7750 -
Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues. All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Again Aaron
On-Page Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0