Questions about duplicate photo content?
-
I know that Google is a mystery, so I am not sure if there are answers to these questions, but I'm going to ask anyway! I recently realized that Google is not happy with duplicate photo content. I'm a photographer and have sold many photos in the past (but retained the rights for) that I am now using on my site. My recent revelations means that I'm now taking down all of these photos. So I've been reverse image searching all of my photos to see if I let anyone else use it first, and in the course of this I found out that there are many of my photos being used by other sites on the web. So my questions are:
With photos that I used first and others have stolen, If I edit these photos (to add copyright info) and then re-upload them, will the sites that are using these images then get credit for using the original image first?
If I have a photo on another one of my own sites and I take it down, can I safely use that photo on my main site, or will Google retain the knowledge that it's been used somewhere else first?
If I sold a photo and it's being used on another site, can I safely use a different photo from the same series that is almost exactly the same? I am unclear what data from the photo Google is matching, and if they can tell the difference between photos that were taken a few seconds apart.
-
I do now see where he did also claim visa versa that using originals wont help either.
why would matt or rand mention it? they don't work for google they will not know everything.
But he also said to the best of his knowledge, at that time, and that in the future that may change and it was 2 years ago. So I would still try to get original images if you can.
-
I don't know where you get the idea that Google is not happy with duplicate photo content but there no such thing as that. If there is, Matt or Rand should have already mentioned it. But there is none, and at the very least I already provided you an evidence to support my claim. Would you rather rely on other presumptions?
FYI, even duplicate content has its own stand on Google. You see, contents and photos are meant to be shared, so as long as you're not doing spammy things on the web, Google has no reason to punish you. Cheer up!
-
But that video is two years old and he says that using duplicate photo content is a good idea for a future quality signal. So I'm not sure that it's still relevant. But I guess we can't prove it one way or the other!
-
But they may reward you for unique images.
-
I think you might want to read this: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2013/07/29/google-we-dont-penalize-duplicate-images/.
-
Why do you think Google doesn't penalize for duplicate photo content? It seems like it would be a great way to find scrapers and those with low-value content.
-
Hi Lina,
I understand your trouble Lina but worry not because Google doesn't penalize duplicate photo content. On the other hand, you can optimize so it can be found easily by adding short but concise meta tag title and meta description.
You don't need to edit the Photos, but you're free to add copyright info. However, I don't think it is necessary for the photos you sold.
It is also not necessary to take down existing photos from one of your sites. But if it were me, I would add a referral link (stating that they can access more photos: or original version of:) to your main site. Not only your audience will take notice of your main site but it will also improve your main site's ranking in search results.
True, Google can tell the difference between photos that were taken a few seconds apart, but there is no reason it should be a big issue. Photos were meant to be shared from the start.
Uhmm I'm getting the image of you wanting to gather audience for your main site immediately. Regarding this, you might try Google Adwords for getting audience faster.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Can I use duplicate content in different US cities without hurting SEO?
So, I have major concerns with this plan. My company has hundreds of facilities located all over the country. Each facility has it's own website. We have a third party company working to build a content strategy for us. What they came up with is to create a bank of content specific to each service line. If/when any facility offers that service, they then upload the content for that service line to that facility website. So in theory, you might have 10-12 websites all in different cities, with the same content for a service. They claim "Google is smart, it knows its content all from the same company, and because it's in different local markets, it will still rank." My contention is that duplicate content is duplicate content, and unless it is "localize" it, Google is going to prioritize one page of it and the rest will get very little exposure in the rankings no matter where you are. I could be wrong, but I want to be sure we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot with this strategy, because it is a major major undertaking and too important to go off in the wrong direction. SEO Experts, your help is genuinely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
SEO for video content that is duplicated accross a larger network
I have a website with lots of content (high quality video clips for a particular niche). All the content gets fed out 100+ other sites on various domains/subdomains which are reskinned for a given city. So the content on these other sites is 100% duplicate. I still want to generate SEO traffic though. So my thought is that we: a) need to have canonical tags from all the other domains/subdomains that point back to the original post on the main site b) probably need to disallow search engine crawlers on all the other domains/subdomains Is this on the right track? Missing anything important related to duplicate content? The idea is that after we get search engines crawling the content correctly, from there we'd use the IP address to redirect the visitor to the best suited domain/subdomain. any thoughts on that approach? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PlusROI0 -
Wondering if creating 256 new pages would cause duplicate content issues
I just completed a long post that reviews 16 landing page tools. I want to add 256 new pages that compare each tool against each other. For example: Leadpages vs. Instapage Leadpages vs. Unbounce Instapage vs. Unbounce, etc Each page will have one product's information on the left and the other on the right. So each page will be a unique combination BUT the same product information will be found on several other pages (its other comparisons vs the other 15 tools). This is because the Leadpages comparison information (a table) will be the same no matter which tool it is being compared against. If my math is correct, this will create 256 new pages - one for each combination of the 16 tools against each other! My site now is new and only has 6 posts/pages if that matters. Want to make sure I don't create a problem early on...Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | martechwiz0 -
How to avoid duplicate content with e-commerce and multiple stores?
We are currently developing an e-commerce platform that will feed multiple stores. Each store will have its own domain and URL, but all stores will offer products that come from the same centralized database. That means all products will have the same image, description and title across all stores. What would be the best practice to avoid getting stores penalized for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agence_Bunji0 -
Real Estate MLS listings - Does Google Consider duplicate content?
I have a real estate website. The site has all residential properties for sale in a certain State (MLS property listings). These properties also appear on 100's of other real estate sites, as the data is pulled from a central place where all Realtors share their listings. Question: will having these MLS listings indexed and followed by Google increase the ratio of duplicate vs original content on my website and thus negatively affect ranking for various keywords? If so, should I set the specific property pages as "no index, no follow" so my website will appear to have less duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Is Sitemap Issue Causing Duplicate Content & Unindexed Pages on Google?
On July 10th my site was migrated from Drupal to Google. The site contains approximately 400 pages. 301 permanent redirects were used. The site contains maybe 50 pages of new content. Many of the new pages have not been indexed and many pages show as duplicate content. Is it possible that there is a site map issue that is causing this problem? My developer believes the map is formatted correctly, but I am not convinced. The sitemap address is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/page-sitemap.xml [^] I am completely non technical so if anyone could take a brief look I would appreciate it immensely. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan | |0 -
Can you be penalized by a development server with duplicate content?
I developed a site for another company late last year and after a few months of seo done by them they were getting good rankings for hundreds of keywords. When penguin hit they seemed to benefit and had many top 3 rankings. Then their rankings dropped one day early May. Site is still indexed and they still rank for their domain. After some digging they found the development server had a copy of the site (not 100% duplicate). We neglected to hide the site from the crawlers, although there were no links built and we hadn't done any optimization like meta descriptions etc. The company was justifiably upset. We contacted Google and let them know the site should not have been indexed, and asked they reconsider any penalties that may have been placed on the original site. We have not heard back from them as yet. I am wondering if this really was the cause of the penalty though. Here are a few more facts: Rankings built during late March / April on an aged domain with a site that went live in December. Between April 14-16 they lost about 250 links, mostly from one domain. They acquired those links about a month before. They went from 0 to 1130 links between Dec and April, then back to around 870 currently According to ahrefs.com they went from 5 ranked keywords in March to 200 in April to 800 in May, now down to 500 and dropping (I believe their data lags by at least a couple of weeks). So the bottom line is this site appeared to have suddenly ranked well for about a month then got hit with a penalty and are not in top 10 pages for most keywords anymore. I would love to hear any opinions on whether a duplicate site that had no links could be the cause of this penalty? I have read there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty per se. I am of the (amateur) opinion that it may have had more to do with the quick sudden rise in the rankings triggering something. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rmsmall0 -
Duplicate Content on Blog
I have a blog I'm setting up. I would like to have a mini-about block set up on every page that gives very brief information about me and my blog, as well as a few links to the rest of the site and some social sharing options. I worry that this will get flagged as duplicate content because a significant amount of my pages will contain the same information at the top of the page, front and center. Is there anything I can do to address this? Is it as much of a concern as I am making it? Should I work on finding some javascript/ajax method for loading that content into the page dynamically only for normal browser pageviews? Any thoughts or help would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayloon0