Duplicate Content
-
I was just using a program (copyscpape) to see if the content on a clients website has been copied. I was surprised that the content on the site was displaying 70% duplicated and it's showing the same content on a few sites with different % duplicated (ranging from 35%-80%) I have been informed that the content on the clients site is original and was written by the client.
My question is, does Google know or understand that the clients website's content was created as original and that the other sites have copied it word-for-word and placed it on their site?
Does he need to re-write the content to make it original? I just want to make sure before I told him to re-write all the content on the site? I'm well aware that duplicate content is bad, but i'm just curious if it's hurting the clients site because they originally created the content.
Thanks for your input.
-
It's absolutely ridiculous that our industry lays down and accepts stuff like this from Google. It is unacceptable for them to not be able to determine who originally created the content. They have the data to do it.
-
Thank you for the responses. They were both very helpful. I went ahead and took a few 10-word samples and searched it in Google with the quotation marks. The client showed up as the first result! He was pleased. Again, the responses were very helpful! Thanks.
I like that tips about using the quotations.
-
There is a way you can report the offending sites to Google if you can prove your content was created first.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en
If you are using a CMS, check the publish dates of the articles.
Like it has already been stated, do a search for some of the content by doing a search in Google for a section of content, surrounded by quotation marks. This tells Google to search for something exactly as it is entered, and return exact, not relevant results. If you see exact phrases that are duplicated word for word, you could contact either the site owner, or look up who hosts the site in Whois, and contact the hosting provider.
-
Take a few 10-word samples of the duplicated content and do a search for them in quotation marks. If your client's site shows up as the first result, you're in good shape. If it doesn't , strongly consider re-writing. Google does it's best to determine and rank the original source of content but, often, it gets it wrong and when that's the case, there isn't too much you can do about it other than building the authority/pagerank of the page from which the content was duplicated.
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
-
Thousands of duplicate website links at "Who links the most" in Google webmasters. Any risk being duplicate website links pointing to website?
Hi all, As I mentioned some days back here, our duplicate website got indexed a month back. Unfortunately there are links to our original website. I noticed that thousands of links are from our duplicate website at "Links to Your Site". Will this hurts? Now we have blocked the duplicate website getting indexed. What to do to remove these links from "Who links the most"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages with Canonical Tags
Hi, I'm an SEO Intern for a third party wine delivery company and I'm trying to fix the following issue with the site regarding duplicate content on our product pages: Just to give you a picture of what I'm dealing with, the duplicate product pages that are being flagged have URLs that have different Geo-variations and Product-Key Variations. This is what Moz's Site Crawler is seeing as Duplicate content for the URL www.example.com/wines/dry-red/: www.example.com/wines/dry-red/_/N-g123456 www.example.com/wines/dry-red/_/N-g456789 www.example.com/wines/California/_/N-0 We have loads of product pages with dozens of duplicate content and I'm coming to the conclusion that its the product keys that are confusing google. So we had the web development team put the canonical tag on the pages but still they were being flagged by google. I checked the of the pages and found that all the pages that had 2 canonical tags I understand we should only have one canonical tag in the so I wanted to know if I could just easily remove the second canonical tag and will it solve the duplicate content issue we're currently having? Any suggestions? Thanks -Drew
Algorithm Updates | | drewstorys0 -
Google creating it own content
I am based in Australia but a US founded search on 'sciatica' shows an awesome answer on the RHS of the SERP https://www.google.com/search?q=sciatica&oq=sciatica&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.3631j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 The download on sciatica is a pdf created by google. Firstly is this common in the US? secondly any inputs on where this is heading for rollout would be appreciated. Is google now creating its own content to publish?
Algorithm Updates | | ClaytonJ0 -
How much content is it safe to change?
I have read that it is unsafe to change more than 20% of your site’s content in any update. The rationale is that "Changing too much at once can flag your site within the Google algorithm as having something suspicious going on." Is this true, has anyone had any direct experiences of this or similar?
Algorithm Updates | | GrouchyKids0 -
Ecommerce: How does having fresh content affect rankings
Hello, For an Ecommerce site, how does fresh content affect rankings? Meaning, fresh vs old content on the home page, category pages, product pages, articles. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
Staging site - Treated as duplicate?
Last week (exactly 8 days ago to be precise) my developer created a staging/test site to test some new features. The staging site duplicated the entire existing site on the same server. To explain this better -My site address is - www.mysite.com The path of the new staging site was www.mysite/staging I realized this only today and have immediately restricted robot text and put a no index no follow on the entire duplicate server folder but I am sure that Google would have indexed the duplicate content by now? So far I do not see any significant drop in traffic but should I be worried? and what if anything can I do at this stage?
Algorithm Updates | | rajatsharma0 -
Will Parked Domain hurt My SEO as Duplicate Content?
Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is: migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain migration-lawyers.com is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png
Algorithm Updates | | thealika0 -
Javascript hidden divs, links to anchor content
Hello, I am working on a web project that breaks up its sections by utilizing hidden divs shown via javascript activated through anchor links. http://www.janandtom.com/ First question: Is this SEO suicide? I have confirmed that the content is being indexed by searching for specific text but have been led to believe that hidden div content will be afforded a lower 'importance'. One suggestion has having the text as display:block and then hiding it on page load. Will this make a difference? Second: Is there any way to have Google index the anchored content by the specific anchor text? An example for the second question: If you search google right now for: buyers like to look at floorplans Tom & Jan You will get a link to: http://www.janandtom.com but I would rather it be: [http://www.janandtom.com/#Interactive Floorplans](http://www.janandtom.com/#Interactive Floorplans) Sorry if this is redundant or addressed before. I tried searching the questions but wasn't getting and definitive direction to go and this project is a little unique for me. Also, I'm just getting my feet we into this 'high-end' seo (new member of SEOMoz) so please bear with me. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | MASSProductions0