Duplicate content? - Ecommerce reviews loading the same products on every page

[thpchlk]

Hello there!

I use a plugin on my ecom site that shows customer reviews - not product reviews but general shopping experience reviews. The plugin also loads links and short descriptions of products those customers bought.

Having installed it site-wide, on every page there are short descriptions of the same products. Of course, as people leave new reviews the content changes (but it doesn't happen very often).

So the question is:

Is having links and short descriptions of the same products on every page harmful for SEO in this case?

I'd be grateful for any insight into this matter.

[thpchlk]

Thank you so much!

You've understood the situation correctly and this is the most helpful answer I'd wish for

Thanks again.

[seoelevated]

If I understand your question properly, the majority of the content on each page is unique, and the page titles and descriptions are unique, but just one section of each page contains some common content which is the same sitewide. So, if this is a correct interpretation of what you wrote, then I don't think the search engines are going to consider the pages as duplicate. This scenario is no different than a common footer or a header navigation section, which are generally the same across all pages of a site.

Also, my perspective is that duplicate content is not a penalty as some people may think it is. Rather, it is a chance that the search engine will choose to not index some of your pages if it thinks that other pages have the same content and that those pages should be indexed instead. In cases where the pages are really just versions of the same thing, this can actually be a good thing. If you had 10 extremely similar pages, all targeted at the same exact visitor queries and intent, you would likely want only one of those indexed. And then, to make sure your preference of "which one" is followed, you would implement a canonical link on all 10, pointing to the preferred one. But, if you did nothing, the search engine might just pick one, and that might also be okay for you (not as good, but okay).

In any case, the situation you described, where there is a sitewide element visible on each page, I don't think is likely to cause the search engines to consider your pages as duplicates, unless there is very little or no other unique content differing on each of those pages.