Duplicate Content Penalties, International Sites
-
We're in the process of rolling out a new domestic (US) website design. If we copy the same theme/content to our International subsidiaries, would the duplicate content penalty still apply? All International sites would carry the Country specific domain, .co.uk, .eu, etc. This question is for English only content, I'm assuming translated content would not carry a penalty.
-
The consensus is that even though the content is the same, that it will rank locally using country specific domains. Can anyone provide examples where this is currently working?
-
I use rackspace | cloud sites. Is there a way I can request to have a domain pushed to a pool you have in UK or CA for example?
-
This Video from Matt Cutts will help too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo
-
I asked this exact question to Greg Grothaus from Google at a conference back in 2009, and his answer was that duplicated content across different TLDs should'nt be something to be too concerned about. Realistically, search engines will decide which version of the site is more relevant for a particular geographic audience.
-
When it comes to English... I just advice that there are ways to make "different" a content. Just think to how different Brits and Americans write many words. Then all the classic International SEO tactics (links for the country your site have to rank, IP, address...)
Apart that, if you have the international sites with their corresponding Tld (.co.uk, .au, .in...) and you specify that the .com is for the USA Google, actually Google is quite good in noticing what site should have to rank for any country.
-
Yes. Translated content will not be considered a penalty as long as long as you launch the site on a domain with proper local TLD and add locally targeted content then you should be ok. Additionally, you may want to consider hosting the website with a local hosting provider.
This should also apply to an English language content modified for UK audience since UK English is technically considered different than the US. We have multiple English language international websites hosted on local TLDs that rank locally for the respective keywords.
Google has become much smarter in terms of detecting the geo local elements and it should serve the appropriate site on the SERP without causing duplicate content issues.
-
I think this sort of duplicate content is something that Google sees often. If you are copying everything exactly between domains I’d question if you need multiple sites. Presuming your content has country specific differences you’ll be ok.
Do not forget to register in Google webmaster tools your target market for each URL. Maybe build some new links in each local at the time of launch (press mentions, twitter shout outs etc).
Also you may want to consider the approach taken by Microsoft. One domain with country specific folders e.g.
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
-
Is this duplicate content when there is a link back to the original content?
Hello, My question is: Is it duplicate content when there is a link back to the original content? For example, here is the original page: http://www.saugstrup.org/en-ny-content-marketing-case-infografik/. But that same content can be found here: http://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/anders-saugstrup/blog/en-ny-content-marketing-case-til-dig, but there is a link back to the original content. Is it still duplicate content? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JoLindahl912 -
Self inflicted duplicate content penalty?
Wondering if I could pick the brains of fellow mozer's. Been working with a client for about 3 months now to get their site up in the engine. In the three months the DA has gone from about 11 to 34 and PA is 40 (up from about 15) so that's all good. However, we seem not to be moving up the ranking much. The average DA of competitors in the niche in the top ten is 25. We have 9.2 times the average no of backlinks too. During a call to the client today they told me that they noticed a major drop in their rankings a few months back. Didn't say this when we started the project. I just searched for the first paragraph on their homepage and it returns 16,000 hits in google, The second returns 9600 and the third 1,400. Searching for the first paragraph of their 'about us' page gives me 13,000 results!! Clearly something is not right here. Looking into this, I seems that someone has use their content, word for word, as the descriptions on thousands of blogs, social sites. I am thinking that this, tied in with the slow movement in the listings, has caused a duplicate content penalty in the search engines. The client haven't copied anyone's content as it is very specific for their site but it seems all over the web. I have advised them to change their site content asap and hope we get a Panda refresh in to view the new unique content. Once the penalty is off i expect the site to shoot up the rankings. From an seo company point of view, should I have seen this before? Maybe. If they had said they suffered a major drop in rankings a few months back - when they dropped their seo agency, I would have looked into it, but one doesn't naturally assume that a client's copy will be posted all over the web, it is not something I would have searched for without reason to search Any thoughts on this, either saying yes or no to my theory would be most welcome please. Thanks Carl
Technical SEO | | GrumpyCarl0 -
Duplicate content for vehicle inventory.
Hey all, In the automotive industry... When uploading vehicle inventory to a website I'm concerned with duplicate content issues. For example, 1 vehicle is uploaded to the main manufacturers website, then again to the actual dealerships website & then again to Craigslist & even sometimes to a group site. The information is all the same, description, notes, car details & images. What would you all recommend for alleviating duplicate content issues? Should I be using the rel canonical back to the manufacturers website? Once the vehicle is sold all pages disappear. Thanks so much for any advice.
Technical SEO | | DCochrane0 -
How do I deal with my pages being seen as duplicate content by SeoMoz?
My Dashboard is giving my lots of warnings for duplicate content but it all seems to have something to do with the www and the slash / For example: http://www.ebow.ie/ is seen as having the same duplicate content as http:/ebow.ie/ and http://www.ebow.ie Alos lots to do with how Wordpress categorizes pages and tags that is driving me bonkers! Any help appreciated! Dave. seomoz.png
Technical SEO | | ebowdublin0 -
Internal linking with Old Content
Hello, I have a sports website in which users write their opinions about the sporting events that take place every day throughout the year. Each of these sporting events generates a new page or URL indicating the match with date. For example: www.domain.com/baseball/boston-v-yankees-04-24-2012-1234.html The teams face several times a year, and each match creates a different URL or page. I would like to link old pages to new pages and vice versa. How would you recommend these pages to be linked? Linking them to each other or linking old pages to new pages that are generated or otherwise? I would appreciate your orientation and help in this case. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | NorbertoMM1 -
Thin/Duplicate Content
Hi Guys, So here's the deal, my team and I just acquired a new site using some questionable tactics. Only about 5% of the entire site is actually written by humans the rest of the 40k + (and is increasing by 1-2k auto gen pages a day)pages are all autogen + thin content. I'm trying to convince the powers that be that we cannot continue to do this. Now i'm aware of the issue but my question is what is the best way to deal with this. Should I noindex these pages at the directory level? Should I 301 them to the most relevant section where actual valuable content exists. So far it doesn't seem like Google has caught on to this yet and I want to fix the issue while not raising any more red flags in the process. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DPASeo0 -
Duplicate Content Errors
Ok, old fat client developer new at SEO so I apologize if this is obvious. I have 4 errors in one of my campaigns. two are duplicate content and two are duplicate title. Here is the duplicate title error Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information.
Technical SEO | | Banknotes
http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/ Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information.
http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/Default.aspx So, my question is... What do I need to do to make this right? They are the same page. in my page load for default.aspx I have this: this.Title = "Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information."; And it occurs only once...0 -
Solution for duplicate content not working
I'm getting a duplicate content error for: http://www.website.com http://www.website.com/default.htm I searched for the Q&A for the solution and found: Access the.htaccess file and add this line: redirect 301 /default.htm http://www.website.com I added the redirect to my .htaccess and then got the following error from Google when trying to access the http://www.website.com/default.htm page: "This webpage has a redirect loop
Technical SEO | | Joeuspe
The webpage at http://www.webpage.com/ has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer." "Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects." How can I correct this? Thanks0