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
-
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 -
Using images from Wikipedia, The right way to give credit for them?
Hi, I am writing my first blog post and I have downloaded 9 images from Wikipedia, After reading the confusing legal stuff, I am under the impression that all those images are allowed to be used for other purposes with citing/ giving credit to the owner. At least the ones I download the author said its ok to use them anywhere, for anything So how do i do that? Should I have something like this: Image, underneath-- image credit to xyz (link to Wikipedia page where i downloaded the image) ??? Thanks for you time and explanation.
Content Development | | Davit19850 -
Using Product Descriptions in Meta Description
Hi All We have over 10000 Products and a while ago we spent some time adding Product Descriptions to the Product Pages, For Example we have Product - Black Snazaroo Face Paint Product Description - Great for Childrens parties, fundraising events, Halloween or other festive faces. An easy makeup to apply and remove. All Snazaroo face paints are Non toxic, Fragrance free and Skin friendly. Snazaroo is suitable for all skin types, however it is always recommended you do a skin patch test on a small area before full application. Unfortuantly our Meta Descriptions really need some work, for example this same page contains the following meta descriptions We realise this could be holding our site back. Is it ok to use the same Product Description inside the Meta Description Tags also, for example can we use the Meta Description for this Page - Thanks
Content Development | | AMG1000 -
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 -
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 -
Duplicate external links?
I have been guest posting at a variety of reputable blogs in my niche. I generally write once or twice a month and have a bio link with a link to my blog. I'm wondering if multiple links from the same domain (but different pages) helps, or if there are some diminishing returns here. Should I only be writing one post for them? Of course, there are other non-SEO benefits too, because these are reputable sites. But I'm wondering how this helps my SEO? Thanks in advance!
Content Development | | JodiFTM0 -
Can you use creative commons non-commercial images on a company blog?
Does anyone know if it is okay to use creative commons images on your company blog if they are under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Technically you are using it on a commercial site, but you are not directly making money from the image or selling it.
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0 -
How can I rank using translated content?
My friend has a website with similar content to mine, in a different language however. He has allowed me to translate his content if I link to it every post (can be nofollow). Does Google penalize me for clearly translated content? How can I make sure it ranks well? BTW, if I convince him that I don't link to him, is it better SEO-wise? Best,
Content Development | | kikocherman
Cherman0