What is considered duplicate content?
-
Hi,
We are working on a product page for bespoke camper vans: http://www.broadlane.co.uk/campervans/vw-campers/bespoke-campers . At the moment there is only one page but we are planning add similar pages for other brands of camper vans. Each page will receive its specifically targeted content however the 'Model choice' cart at the bottom (giving you the choice to select the internal structure of the van) will remain the same across all pages.
Will this be considered as duplicate content? And if this is a case, what would be the ideal solution to limit penalty risk: A rel canonical tag seems wrong for this, as there is no original item as such. Would an iFrame around the 'model choice' enable us to isolate the content from being indexed at the same time than the page?
Thanks,
Celine
-
Hi Celine,
Google is very smart at finding content these days, so I would avoid any possible ways of trying to hide it, but looking at what is there, I wouldn't worry too much.
When looking at the model choice at the bottom of the page, it is the same for a reason, and there is no way around it. However, I wouldn't think that Google would see that as duplicate content. Lists in this manner don't normally cause issues and as mentioned above, it is more often larger 'chunks' of content that causes issues.
There are other considerations that you might want to think about before releasing a lot more pages in this manner, and one if them is making sure Google won't see the pages appearing for no other reason that to draw in search traffic for particular phrases.
Keep the pages well stocked with unique relevant content and you should be good to go.
-Andy
-
A quick way to figure this out.
Copy a entire paragraph from the content in question. Paste the whole paragraph into Google search.
any close matches? Then It is duplicate.
Thanks,
- Mike Bean
-
This type of duplicate content is common on ecommerce websites, and it isn't necessarily a big problem. However, given the fact that there will be a higher percentage of duplicate content than unique content, you run the risk of some of your pages being omitted from search results for certain queries. If that is the case, searchers will see "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the (# here)already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
This isn't really a penalty. It's just Google being efficient with their algorithm. It shouldn't be a problem for highly targeted searches, but you may lose a little search visibility for more generic searches.
My advice is to get creative and find new ways to add more unique content to your product pages. Add testimonials, user-generated reviews, camper van adventure stories, etc.
You are right that canonical tags are wrong for this situation. Using an iframe doesn't make much sense either. Google has stated that they try to associate iframe content with the page it's embedded on anyway.
Further information:
-
Hi there,
If the higher percentage of content on each page is different from any other you should be OK. However I'd be worried about producing a whole bunch of pages like this. -
According to Google: "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar."
The example you give is a bit in between: it contains a part which is unique - however the tabulated content which would appear on each page contains more content than the unique part. Personally I don't think that these pages would be considered duplicate content. However, if you want to be on the save side you could make a separate page with all possible configurations. This would also have the advantage that you could do without the tab's (end of of 2014 John Muller indicated that hiding content under tabs is not the best seo strategy (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html).
I wouldn't go for the iframe solution - it's a bit an outdated way to present information.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
Hi Celine
Good news, as you haven't made all the pages yet, now is the easiest time to implement new things! : -)
The best way I would recommend is utilising HTML Semantics http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.aspYou would have your main content inside the
and any supporting but repetitive content in <inside>tags.
Hope that helps!
King Regards
Jimmy</inside>
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
-
Could duplicate (copied) content actually hurt a domain?
Hi 🙂 I run a small wordpress multisite network where the main site which is an informative portal about the Langhe region in Italy, and the subsites are websites of small local companies in the tourism and wine/food niche. As an additional service for those who build a website with us, I was thinking about giving them the possibility to use some ouf our portal's content (such as sights, events etc) on their website, in an automatic way. Not as an "SEO" plus, but more as a service for their current users/visitors base: so if you have a B&B you can have on your site an "events" section with curated content, or a section about thing to see (monuments, parks, museums, etc) in that area, so that your visitors can enjoy reading some content about the territory. I was wondering if, apart from NOT being benefical, it would be BAD from an SEO point of view... ie: if they could be actually penlized by google. Thanks 🙂 Best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Enrico_Cassinelli0 -
Duplicate Content... Really?
Hi all, My site is www.actronics.eu Moz reports virtually every product page as duplicate content, flagged as HIGH PRIORITY!. I know why. Moz classes a page as duplicate if >95% content/code similar. There's very little I can do about this as although our products are different, the content is very similar, albeit a few part numbers and vehicle make/model. Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowoody
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/audi-a4-8d-b5-1994-2000-abs-ecu-en/bosch-5-3
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/bmw-3-series-e36-1990-1998-abs-ecu-en/ate-34-51 Now, multiply this by ~2,000 products X 7 different languages and you'll see we have a big dupe content issue (according to Moz's Crawl Diagnostics report). I say "according to Moz..." as I do not know if this is actually an issue for Google? 90% of our products pages rank, albeit some much better than others? So what is the solution? We're not trying to deceive Google in any way so it would seem unfair to be hit with a dupe content penalty, this is a legit dilemma where our product differ by as little as a part number. One ugly solution would be to remove header / sidebar / footer on our product pages as I've demonstrated here - http://woodberry.me.uk/test-page2-minimal-v2.html since this removes A LOT of page bloat (code) and would bring the page difference down to 80% duplicate.
(This is the tool I'm using for checking http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php) Other "prettier" solutions would greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks,
Woody 🙂1 -
Duplicate content on subdomains
Hi All, The structure of the main website goes by http://abc.com/state/city/publication - We have a partnership with public libraries to give local users access to the publication content for free. We have over 100 subdomains (each for an specific library) that have duplicate content issues with the root domain, Most subdomains have very high page authority (the main public library and other local .gov websites have links to this subdomains).Currently this subdomains are not index due to the robots text file excluding bots from crawling. I am in the process of setting canonical tags on each subdomain and open the robots text file. Should I set the canonical tag on each subdomain (homepage) to the root domain version or to the specific city within the root domain? Example 1:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NewspaperArchive
Option 1: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/california/covina/
Option 2: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ Example 2:
Option 1: http://galveston.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/texas/galveston/
Option 2: http://galveston.abc.com = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ Example 3:
Option 1: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/kansas/hutchinson/
Option 2: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ I believe it makes more sense to set the canonical tag to the corresponding city (option 1), but wondering if setting the canonical tag to the root domain will pass "some link juice" to the root domain and it will be more beneficial. Thanks!0 -
Need help with huge spike in duplicate content and page title errors.
Hi Mozzers, I come asking for help. I've had a client who's reported a staggering increase in errors of over 18,000! The errors include duplicate content and page titles. I think I've found the culprit and it's the News & Events calender on the following page: http://www.newmanshs.wa.edu.au/news-events/events/07-2013 Essentially each day of the week is an individual link, and events stretching over a few days get reported as duplicate content. Do you have any ideas how to fix this issue? Any help is much appreciated. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bamcreative0 -
Duplicate content across hundreds of Local sites and they all rank #1
Usually when we discuss duplicate content, we're addressing the topic of penalties or non-indexing. In this case, we're discussing ranking high with duplicate content. I've seen lots of dental, chiropractor and veterinarian sites built by companies that give them cookie cutter sites with the same copy. And they all rank #1 or #2. Here are two companies that do that:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | katandmouse
http://www.rampsites.com/rampsites/home_standard.asp?sectionid=4
http://mysocialpractice.com/about/ The later uses external blogs to provide inbound links to their clients' site, but not all services do that, in fact, this is the first time I've seen them with external blogs. Usually the blog with duplicate copy is ON SITE and the sites still rank #1. Query "Why Your Smile Prefers Water Over Soft Drinks" to see duplicate content on external blogs. Or "Remember the Mad Hatter from the childhood classic, Alice in Wonderland? Back then, the process of making hats involved using mercury compounds. Overexposure could produce symptoms referred to as being" for duplicate content on chiropractor sites that rank high. I've seen well optimized sites rank under them even though their sites have just as much quality content and it's all original with more engagement and inbound links. It appears to me that Google is turning a blind eye on duplicate content. Maybe because these are local businesses with local clientele it doesn't care that a chiropractor in NY has the same content as one in CA, just as the visitor doesn't care because the visitor in CA isn't look at a chiropractor's site in NY generally. So maybe geo-targeting the site has something to do with it. As a test, I should take the same copy and put it on a non-geo-targeted site and see if it will get indexed. I asked another Local SEO expert if she has run across this, probably the best in my opinion. She has and she finds it difficult to rank above them as well. It's almost as if Google is favoring those sites. So the question is, should all dentists, chiropractors and veterinarians give it up to these services? I shudder to think that, but, hey it's working and it's a whole lot less work - and maybe expense - for them.0 -
Duplicate content mess
One website I'm working with keeps a HTML archive of content from various magazines they publish. Some articles were repeated across different magazines, sometimes up to 5 times. These articles were also used as content elsewhere on the same website, resulting in up to 10 duplicates of the same article on one website. With regards to the 5 that are duplicates but not contained in the magazine, I can delete (resulting in 404) all but the highest value of each (most don't have any external links). There are hundreds of occurrences of this and it seems unfeasible to 301 or noindex them. After seeing how their system works I can canonical the remaining duplicate that isn't contained in the magazine to the corresponding original magazine version - but I can't canonical any of the other versions in the magazines to the original. I can't delete the other duplicates as they're part of the content of a particular issue of a magazine. The best thing I can think of doing is adding a link in the magazine duplicates to the original article, something along the lines of "This article originally appeared in...", though I get the impression the client wouldn't want to reveal that they used to share so much content across different magazines. The duplicate pages across the different magazines do differ slightly as a result of the different Contents menu for each magazine. Do you think it's a case of what I'm doing will be better than how it was, or is there something further I can do? Is adding the links enough? Thanks. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Duplicate content: is it possible to write a page, delete it and use it for a different site?
Hi, I've a simple question. Some time ago I built a site and added pages to it. I have found out that the site was penalized by Google and I have neglected it. The problem is that I had written well-optimized pages on that site, which I would like to use on another website. Thus, my question is: if I delete a page I had written on site 1, can use it on page 2 without being penalized by Google due to duplicate content? Please note: site one would still be online. I will simply delete some pages and use them on site 2. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Duplicate content on index.htm page
How do I avoid duplicate content on the index.htm page . I need to redirect the spider from the /index.htm file to the main root of http://www.manandhisvan.com.au and hence avoid duplicate content. Does anyone know of a foolproof way of achieving this without me buggering up the complete site Cheers Freddy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fatfreddy0