On-site duplication working - not penalised - any ideas?
-
I've noticed a website that has been set up with many virtually identical pages. For example many of them have the same content (minimal text, three video clips) and only the town name varies. Surely this is something that Google would be against? However the site is consistently ranking near the top of Google page 1, e.g. http://www.maxcurd.co.uk/magician-guildford.html for "magician Guildford", http://www.maxcurd.co.uk/magician-ascot.html for "magician Ascot" and so on (even when searching without localisation or personalisation).
For years I've heard SEO experts say that this sort of thing is frowned on and that they will get penalised, but it never seems to happen. I guess there must be some other reason that this site is ranked highly - any ideas? The content is massively duplicated and the blog hasn't been updated since 2012 but it is ranking above many established older sites that have lots of varied content, good quality backlinks and regular updates.
Thanks.
-
Egol is right - pages like this can persist in quieter niches, especially if there are not a huge number of other results to take the thin results' place. I notice that this guy's page for London has a lot more content, probably indicative of the fact that the competition for rankings and business is a lot higher in London than it is in surrounding areas.
-
(My Experience) I am having the exact same problem currently,
It is an absolute nightmare being outranked by a poor site, with poor content and a poor user experience,
However through Moz advice i have been told to keep doing what we are doing publishing quality content the right way and focus on the quality of your website, making improvements,building links and you will be rewarded,
Nobody can escape the Panda forever
http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-panda-update
Hope this helps a little,
James
-
Google has been killing sites with lots of cookie-cutter pages for at least 8 to 10 years. In busy niches they get killed quickly. In sleepy niches they can persist a lot longer.
For years I've heard SEO experts say that this sort of thing is frowned on and that they will get penalised, but it never seems to happen.
Those experts are right nearly 100% of the time. These sites rarely survive today. So, I think that your use of the term "never seems to happen" is because you are frustrated with this guy.
On rare instances, I see a site like this persist in the SERPs of a sleepy niche for years and years. They often have a lot of people talking about them, giving them lots of social attention, citations, mentions, etc. I believe that may have something to do with why they survive.
Have you seen this guy perform? If you haven't, maybe you should.
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
-
Site build in the 80% of canonical URLs - What is the impact on visibility?
Hey Everyone, I represent international wall decorations store where customer can freely choose a pattern to be printed on a given material among a few milions of patterns. Due to extreme large number of potential URL combinations we struggle with too many URL adressess for a months now (search console notifications). So we finally decided to reduce amount of products with canonical tag. Basing on users behavior, our business needs and monthly search volume data we selected 8 most representative out of 40 product categories and made them canonical toward the rest. For example: If we chose 'Canvas prints' as our main product category, then every 'Framed canvas' product URL points rel=canonical tag toward its equivalent URL within 'Canvas prints' category. We applied the same logic to other categories (so "Vinyl wall mural - Wild horses running" URL points rel=canonical tag to "Wall mural - Wild horses running" URL, etc). In terms of Googlebot interpretation, there are really tiny differences between those Product URLs, so merging them with rel=canonical seems like a valid use. But we need to keep those canonicalised URLs for users needs, so we can`t remove them from a store as well as noindex does not seem like an good option. However we`re concerned about our SEO visibility - if we make those changes, our site will consist of ~80% canonical URLs (47,5/60 millions). Regarding your experience, do you have advices how should we handle that issue? Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | _JediMindBender
JMB0 -
A Sitemap Web page & A Sitemap in htaccess - will a website be penalised for having both?
Hi I have a sitemap url already generated by SEO Yoast in the htaccess file, and I have submitted that to the search engines. I'd already created a sitemap web page on the website, also as a helpful aid for users to see a list of all page urls. Is this a problem and could this scenario create duplicate issues or any problems with search engines? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOguy10 -
Spam sites with low spam score?
Hello! I have a fair few links on some of the old SEO 'Directory' sites. I've got rid of all the obviously spammy ones - however there are a few that remain which have very low spam scores, and decent page authority, yet they are clearly just SEO directories - I can't believe they service any other purpose. Should we now just be getting rid of all links like this, or is it worth keeping if the domain authority is decent and spam score low? Thanks Sam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Algorithmically penalized site
I have been doing SEO for years, but luckily have never had a client penalized or had to go through that. I see everyone talking about it at conferences and know the absolute basics of recovery, but just had someone come to me that was algorithmically penalized about two years ago. They have no actual data to show me a date and they couldn't tell me a specific date. According to them, their SEO disappeared and wouldn't give them access to the analytics. They are definitely showing just about every red flag with anchor tags and low trust links and tons of duplicate content. Just about everything. I realize you don't have the deep data to go by, but are there cases when it is just better to start over from scratch. They have literally thousands of bad links and strange site pages that they say they weren't even aware of. Whether they were or not I guess isn't the point now, but I have heard rumors that if you start over, Google will still figure it out and follow you with the penalty. Is this true or documented? Don't want to potentially recommend that if that is something that generally happens to bad offenders. Happy to do the work and try to resolve their issues, but it is a lot of work and is going to be expensive and want to present other options. Thanks and any thoughts suggestions are appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
Google SEVERE drop as of last week (oct 10) on long standing .org site
Hello Experts Wanted some imput if possible. I own a .org informational site that has been #1 in its category for Google Yahoo and Bing under a major keyword for years. The site is aged back to 2005 and all of the sudden it dropped on August 10 (Google only- Yahoo and Bing still #1)) but remained atop the primary keywords that it is namesaked for .org (xxxxyyyzzz.org) and then Oct 9-10 it dropped from the page 1 top ranking it had for years on that primary keyword to page 13. I dont know where to begin to look. Any ideas how something like this could happen and what "Stones" I should turn. We purchased the website and are not SEO gurus so just not sure. Any help would be appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TBKO1 -
Methods for getting links to my site indexed?
What are the best practices for getting links to my site indexed in search engines. We have been creating content and acquiring backlinks for the last few months. They are not being found in the back link checkers or in the Open Site Explorer. What are the tricks of the trade for imporiving the time and indexing of these links? I have read about some RSS methods using wordpress sites but that seems a little shady and i am sure google is looking for that now. Look forward to your advice.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | devonkrusich0 -
How is this obvious black hat technique working in Google?
Get ready to have your minds blown. Try a search in Google for any of these: proform tour de france tour de france trainer tour de france exercise bike proform tour de france bike In each instance you will notice that Proform.com, the maker of the bike, is not #1. In fact, the same guy is #1 every time, and this is the URL: www.indoorcycleinstructor.com/tour-de-france-indoor-cycling-bike Here's the fun part. Click on that result and guess where you go? Yup, Proform.com. The exact same page ranking right behind it in fact. Actually, this URL first redirects to an affiliate link and that affiliate link redirects to Proform.com. I want to know two things. First, how on earth did they do this? They got to #1 ahead of Proform's own page. How was it done? But the second question is, how have they not been caught? Are they cloaking? How does Google rank a double 301 redirect in the top spot whose end destination is the #2 result? PS- I have a site in this industry and this is how I caught it and why it is of particular interest. Just can't figure out how it was done or why they have not been caught. Not because I plan to copy them, but because I plan to report them to Google but want to have some ammo.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Can good penalize a site, and stop it ranking under a keyword permanently
hi all we recently took on a new client, asking us to improve there google ranking, under the term letting agents glasgow , they told us they used to rank top 10 but now are on page 14 so it looks like google has slapped them one, my question is can google block you permanently from ranking under a keyword or disadvantage you, as we went though the customers links, and removed the ones that looked strange, and kept the links that looked ok. but then there ranking dropped to 21, is it worth gaining new links under there main keyword even tho it looks like google is punishing them for having some bad links. the site is www. fine..lets...ltd...co....uk all one word cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | willcraig0