Duplicate content for hotel websites - the usual nightmare? is there any solution other than producing unique content?

[McTaggart]

Hiya Mozzers I often work for hotels. A common scenario is the hotel / resort has worked with their Property Management System to distribute their booking availability around the web... to third party booking sites - with the inventory goes duplicate page descriptions sent to these "partner" websites.

I was just checking duplication on a room description - 20 loads of duplicate descriptions for that page alone - there are 200 rooms - so I'm probably looking at 4,000 loads of duplicate content that need rewriting to prevent duplicate content penalties, which will cost a huge amount of money.

Is there any other solution? Perhaps ask booking sites to block relevant pages from search engines?

[McTaggart]

Hi Kurt - very true - they should be taking the time for sure. I think part of problem is legacy of duplicate content - glad I'm not in their shoes!

Yup - rewriting is what I'm doing for those guys - inc new ideas for engaging content. Will let you know how it goes - an interesting project for me as never worked with a directory before!

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Happy to help.

You may actually want to recommend to the brokers that they take the time to create original content.  It's in their best interest since I assume they get paid for booking rooms/properties and they'd probably book more if they got more traffic by having original content.

In regards to that directory site, it's likely Google just decided they weren't the version of the content they wanted to display.  If everything else is fine with that site, I'd bet just rewriting the pages to have original content (not just spun) would change their situation dramatically.

[McTaggart]

Thanks for your wise feedback EGOL - appreciated.

[McTaggart]

Hi Kurt and thanks for your great feedback there - funnily enough have just been writing unique content for these TPIs this week - so they have something different to work if they don't want to grapple with duplicate content issues - I've noticed the clever guys are now employing their own copywriters to produce unique content, yet many do not.

Just been looking at stats for a certain directory site and they've progressively lost traffic since panda struck - there's absolutely nothing wrong with their website (just completed site audit) beyond heavy duplication issues (as they've been copying and pasting property descriptions through to own site).

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

This is exactly the kind of situation where rel=canonical is supposed to be used.  Rarely is there going to be 100% exact match because in most cases the use of the duplicated content is on different sites which have different headers, footers, nav menus, etc.

Put the canonical tag on your own site and then ask the booking sites if they would put them on their pages, indicating that your page is the canonical page.  If they won't, then publish your page a week or so before you give out the content to the booking sites, making sure to use the canonical tag on your own site.  That way, Google can find it first.

Another option would be to write unique content for your own site and then send out something different to all the booking sites.  Yes, they will all have duplicate content, but your site won't.  So, you should rank just fine and they will have to compete to see who can get in the listings.

Keep in mind that there isn't really a duplicate content penalty.  When Google sees duplicates, they just don't include all of the duplicates in their search results.  They choose the one they think it the canonical version and the others are left out.  Not every page gets listed, but no site is penalized either.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[CleverPhD]

I agree with EGOL and was going to suggest the same thing rel=canonical

[EGOL]

It is supposed to be used on exact match duplicates.  However, I know that it works on less than exact match.  How far it can be stretched, I have no idea.

[McTaggart]

Can you use rel=canonical effectively if the duplication of a page is extensive yet only partial? in this instance I'm sometimes seeing say 3 paragraph room descriptions - e.g. 1st para carbon copy, yet para 2 and 3 include duplicate content and some new content.

[EGOL]

rel=canonical   (if you started with original content and can get everyone everywhere to use it and none of it gets stolen)

[webnology]

Hi luke,

I guess using the noindex parameter would  be the best option here, no?

Best reagrds,
Michel