Content spamming risk
-
If some websites, which provide information about apps in a particular niche, are publishing the same content which we have given in our app's description when they refer our app for that particular niche then would it lead to spamming? Our website is getting a backlink from one such website so are we at any sort of risk? What should we do about it without having to lose that backlink?
-
Thank you!
-
If it's a small snippet of text (like you get for boilerplate product descriptions on eCommerce sites), then the risk isn't very high. In fact Google know that often, many sites will end up with the same product descriptions which they take directly from the manufacturer(s), e.g: hardware stores selling parts
If it's a significant piece of content like an article or custom designed content piece, then there could be some risk involved. In that case you might tell the person who is using your content, to add a canonical tag to their page pointing to yours
Unless it's a study, article or something pretty large, I wouldn't be overly worried. That doesn't mean that what you are all doing together is optimum, it would be better to have unique descriptive snippets (so that each page has a different value-add). That being said, sometimes budget constraints don't allow for that
Of course one thing you could do, is wait until everyone has copied your snippet of text, and then change your own snippet to be different and better than everyone else's
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
-
Removing Personal content from Google Index
Hi everyone, A user is complaining that her name is appearing in google search through our job ads site, so I removed such ads through Search Console, but the problem is not the ads anymore but our internal search results. The ads are no longer live but our searches has been indexed by google back then, We have been manually taking over 500 pages that included such name but more and more keep coming through pagination, we haven't found a pattern yet so pretty much any search result might have contained such name. We might get some legal issues here, did you guys got into anything similar before? We have just set some rules so that this doesn't happen again, but still can't find a way to deal with this one. Thanks in advance. PD: Not sure if this is the right category to fit it.
Technical SEO | | JoaoCJ0 -
Content not being spidered
I've got a site with some serious content issues. Â The builder of the template doesn't understand what I'm asking (they're confusing spidering with indexing). Â If the page is run through a spider simulator (web confs won't work on this site for some reason) it shows the content is not being seen by Google. Â The template is Momentum and on Joomla. Â Most other sites I've found on the web have a similar issue. Â Basically it's reading the text in the header and footer, but nothing in the body. Â Any thoughts? www.rocksolidroof.com
Technical SEO | | GregWalt0 -
How to get rid of duplicate content
I have duplicate content that looks like http://deceptionbytes.com/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&link=932fea0640143bf08fe157d3570792a56dcc1284 - however I have 50 of these all with different numbers on the end. Does this affect the search engine optimization and how can I disallow this in my robots.txt file?
Technical SEO | | Mishelm1 -
Best Way To Handle Expired Content
Hi, I have a client's site that posts job openings. There is a main list of available jobs and each job has an individual page linked to from that main list. However, at some point the job is no longer available. Currently, the job page goes away and returns a status 404 after the job is no longer available. The good thing is that the job pages get links coming into the site. The bad thing is that as soon as the job is no longer available, those links point to a 404 page. Ouch. Currently Google Webmaster Tools shows 100+ 404 job URLs that have links (maybe 1-3 external links per). The question is what to do with the job page instead of returning a 404. For business purposes, the client cannot display the content after the job is no longer available. To avoid duplicate content issues, the old job page should have some kind of unique content saying the job is longer available. Any thoughts on what to do with those old job pages? Or would you argue that it is appropriate to return 404 header plus error page since this job is truly no longer a valid page on the site? Thanks for any insights you can offer.
Technical SEO | | Matthew_Edgar
Matthew1 -
How do I fix duplicate content with the home page?
This is probably SEO 101, but I'm unsure what to do here... Last week my weekly crawl diagnostics were off the chart because http:// was not resolving to http://www...fixed that but now it's saying I have duplicate content on: http://www.......com http://www.......com/index.php How do I fix this? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | jgower0 -
Theft of content
Hi i done a post a while ago about a compeditor stealing content from our site time and time again and this morning i have found a referal link from a site that i am not sure what it does and would like more info please. The site is http://headmetrics.com/ I have read about the site and I am just wondering if people can use this site to copy our site any advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Duplicate Content issue
I have been asked to review an old website to an identify opportunities for increasing search engine traffic. Whilst reviewing the site I came across a strange loop. On each page there is a link to printer friendly version: http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes That page also has a link to a printer friendly version http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes&printfriendly=yes and so on and so on....... Some of these pages are being included in Google's index. I appreciate that this can't be a good thing, however, I am not 100% sure as to the extent to which it is a bad thing and the priority that should be given to getting it sorted. Just wandering what views people have on the issues this may cause?
Technical SEO | | CPLDistribution0 -
Duplicate content and URL's
Hi Guys, Hope you are all well. Just a quick question which you will find nice and easy 🙂 I am just about to work through duplicate content pages and URL changes. Firstly, With the duplicate content issue i am finding the seo friendly URL i would normally direct to in some cases has less links, authority and root domain to it than some of the unseo friendly URL's. will this harm me if i still 301 redirect them to the seo friendly URL. Also, With the url changed it is going to be a huge job to change all the url so they are friendly and the CMS system is poor. Is there a better way of doing this? It has been suggested that we create a new webpage with a friendly URL and redirect all the pages to that. Will this lose all the weight as it will be a brand new page? Thank you for your help guys your legends!! Cheers Wayne
Technical SEO | | wazza19850