Duplicate Content - But it isn't!

[Astute-Media]

Hi All,

I have a site that releases alerts for particular problem/events/happenings. Due to legal stuff we keep the majority of the content the same on each of these event pages.

The URLs are all different but it keeps coming back as duplicate content. The canonical tag is not right (i dont think for this)

egs

http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/coral-sea-waterworld-resort-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-july-2014

http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/hotel-concorde-el-salam-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-may-2014

[Astute-Media]

Hi, I thought as much! Thanks for that, we are actually redesigning these Alerts at the moment and each page will be specific with different content. It sounds like there is going to be nothing i can do about the historical content without working my way through it!

[Lumina]

Hi there Astute Media,

Unfortunately, what you have here is the definition of duplicate content. The body text of the page is exactly the same on both pages. Even though your titles are different (and even then, not by much), Google sees that the body text is exactly the same.

It doesn't help that the page has 2 short paragraphs of text, either. These two things are big red flags to Google that a website is spam - but there are ways you can fix this.

My suggestion would be to write something specific to each page. Meaning, the second page is for a hotel rather than the resort - maybe add information about the hotel, or what general complaints have been filed. Another option would be to have 1 page with the information in your body text, and have links to pages that go to the specific resort/hotel/etc. This would require a redesign of your site's navigation, so you may wish to go with the prior rather than the latter.

Either way, I can tell you that you DO need to do something to fix the duplication. Good luck!