Can I have the same item description on Amazon, eBay and my website?
-
Hi guys,
After looking on the Internet and reading the Learn SEO section on this site, I've realised that Google doesn't like duplicate content and penalises it, whether that's duplication on your own site or of another site's content.
We are an online retailer currently selling on different platforms including Amazon, eBay and our own ecommerce webstore.
Is it okay to have the same item description (i.e. main page copy) on each of these sites, or will our search rankings get negatively impacted?
Thank you in advance, I have researched on this issue also but I couldn't find a concrete answer.
- Tanay
-
- Depending on the authority of your website depends how quickly it gets indexed/ranked
For example:
-
- I have seen stuff on Quora get indexed by Google in about 15 minutes
- If you have a new site, it could take a couple of weeks
- Personally if I'm planning on launching a new product I'd post in the info on my site a couple of weeks before it's ready to launch with a coming soon banner. This is good for two (2) resons:
-
- You are generating buzz
- You are making sure Google knows your site published the content before anyone else.
- Is duplicate content an problem?
Yes.
If you get indexed first, is it your problem?
I'd say no
-
Pravin -
You definitely CAN... but that's not always the best idea. We do car dealer websites, and we feed our dealers' inventories out to hundreds of online classified sites. Many of our dealers also use eBay motors. Our system allows them to either write a single description that goes to every property, or separate descriptions for website, eBay, and classifieds.
You should be able to do the same thing with your site. You should always have a bit more detail and depth on your own website, but if your system doesn't allow for you to do so, you'll probably still be ok. The search engines are smart enough to realize that the different online stores and classified sites are all selling the same product (and won't assign a dupe content penalty).
Remember - you should always look at your website and create content/descriptions that your customers (and potential customers) will find the most useful and relevant. Write for people, not for search engines. Plus, you've got different audiences on the other sales platforms, so unique descriptions might help with conversions, based on the audience you're trying to reach. BUT, if you're not able to, you should be ok with using the same description across the board.
-
I would try and vary them if possible... Spending the most time on your sites product description.
This could also help your listings / website stand out from the rest.
-
I've used Amazon and eBay very often back then and between Amazon and eBay it shouldn't matter having the same description.
However, your own website should have more in depth details and should not be exactly similar to Amazon and eBay. Because although if you post the description own your site first, Amazon and eBay might just rank higher than you just because.
But from my experience, products generally have the same descriptions and details. If you create some sort of slight variation, it shouldn't be negatively effecting SEO.
My suggestion is keep Amazon and eBay same just because they rank well in the first place. For your own site, make slight variations.
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
-
Anything wrong with multiple meta descriptions and multiple title tags? We have 2 by mistake
Hi, As I stated in the we have 2 meta description and title tags. Will this hurts? How Google handles this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Duplicate website pages indexed: Ranking dropped. Does Google checks the duplicate domain association?
Hi all, Our duplicate website which is used for testing new optimisations got indexed and we dropped in rankings. But I am not sure whether this is exact reason as it happened earlier too where I don't find much drop in rankings. Also I got replies in the past that it'll not really impact original website but duplicate website. I think this rule applies to the third party websites. But if our own domain has exact duplicate content; will Google knows that we own the website from any other way we are associated like IP addresses and servers, etc..to find the duplicate website is hosted by us? I wonder how Google treats duplicate content from third party domains and own domains. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Duplicate website got indexed: Caused rank drop?
Hi all, We have replica of our website with exact pages and content. That website got indexed by mistake and allowed for bots for more than 10 days. Our ranking dropped now and we moved from 2nd page to 5th page. But previously we had this happened and didn't hurt much. We got punished now? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
How can I use Intuit without getting duplicate content issues
All of my Intuit site show duplicate content on the index pages. How can I avoid this
Algorithm Updates | | onestrohm0 -
Could we run into issues with duplicate content penalties if we were to borrow product descriptions?
Hello, I work for an online retailer that has the opportunity to add a lot of SKUs to our site in a relatively short amount of time by borrowing content from another site (with their permission). There are a lot of positives for us to do this, but one big question we have is what the borrowed content will do to our search rankings (we normally write our own original content in house for a couple thousand SKUs). Organic search traffic brings in a significant chunk of our business and we definitely don't want to do something that would jeopardize our rankings. Could we run into issues with duplicate content penalties if we were to use the borrowed product descriptions? Is there a rule of thumb for what proportion of the site should be original content vs. duplicate content without running into issues with our search rankings? Thank you for your help!
Algorithm Updates | | airnwater0 -
Can visitors duration time affect Google Rankings?
Does the time a person stays on a website affect Search Rankings? If so, could the lower time from Adwords Visitors be effecting organic rankings? And the same for bounce rate. If Non-Paid Search Traffic Avg. Visit Duration time is 3:55 and Paid Search Traffic Avg. Visit Duration is 1:59 Could the low duration time be affecting our website rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | hfranz0 -
Is it ok to repeat part of a meta-description across multiple pages?
For example, what if I was to conclude each meta-description tag with the line... "Free shipping for orders over $90." The rest of the meta-description tag on every page is unique, but the last sentence would be the same or at least similar. Thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | B-man0 -
Videos increase ranking of products in SERPS from Ecommerce Website
Just noticed something I've never seen before..and I just wanted to see if anyone else experienced this. I work for a 15000+ item eccommerce website, and today I noticed that on a few brand searches, several individual product pages were coming up. This is actually unusual because most of our individual item pages (including these) aren't ranked well enough to show up well in a brand search (and don't try to target brand terms either), but a correlation here was that both items contained videos referenced within. These were not videos hosted on our YouTube brand page either..these were videos done by separate manufacturers - one was hosted on their site, one on ours. Google actually pulled the snapshot of the video to the SERP as well... even though it was embedded within other product copy. Has anyone else noticed any preferential treatment given to effectively random items on your eCommerce website because it was augmented by video? I can assure you there was nothing otherwise unique about these products and they're not really that sought after. Neither item or url was new, and neither were the videos within. Also, this was a Universal Google search, not one for videos. (Sorry, I'm not allowed to reference directly). Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | Blenny0