The impact of duplicate PRODUCTS on Google?

[leehack]

How long was that piece of string again.

Twice as long as half of it.

[leehack]

With 4 or 5 suppliers contributing to a page, at best that will create a page around 20-25% the same as any other, so no way could that be duplicate IMO, but the product page where you actually view the product, almost certainly if it is just a straight copy.

[RuralWeb]

On the other hand, what sort of percentage of duplicate content would be considered 'significant'.
There has to be a threshold if the premise of penalisation for duplication is true.

There is a limit BUT all SEO specialists have thier secrets

[Jarvis]

There is a limit BUT all SEO specialists have thier secrets

LOL, And so does Google

Lee, As far as a dedicated Product page will, as you say, clearly be seen as a duplicate.
To be honest, that really does not matter too much.
The Section listing of products will already have done it's work, being the landing page for example, a search for 'Widgets'.
Most of my sites sell have products purchasable from the Section listing anyway.
'Extended Info' pages are not attached to all products.
It would still be interesting to understand what percentage of duplication is considered significant

[Mike Hughes]

It would still be interesting to understand what percentage of duplication is considered significant

Search on Google and start reading. There's lot's of discussion on this.

Mike

[CymraegKev]

Matt Cutts has a [reasonably] similar discussion here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/duplic...tent-question/

His blog really is worth sitting down one day with a large coffee and trawling through. Some incredible SEO tips in there I think.

HTH

Kev

[Jarvis]

Search on Google and start reading. There's lot's of discussion on this. Mike

Thanks for the advice Mike.
In fact I DID search the forum but did not find a thread that addressed the particular question of whether duplicates, used in the way I have detailed at the start of the thread, actually have an impact on Google.

Out of over 500 threads that include the word Google, some where irrelevant, dealt with v7, didn't quite hit the button or had been highjacked by flippancy.
It has to be said, the 'search' and 'Advanced Search' on the forum aren't the best tool and can sometimes be difficult to narrow down.

As a regular visitor, (and more recently a contributor), to the forum over many years, I have read virtually every post on the forum and am always happy to see 'Old Chestnuts' freshened up and viewed from a different angle.

Nonetheless, I DO take your point Mike, but on this occasion feel that the new thread is justified.

[Stereo Steve]

Interesting one this. We have SPP pages which we aim to get 120 words or more on. We also may have 1 or more duplicates above this which each will have 40 unique words. Then on the home page we have new products. For this, we have created a variable where we can add yet more unique text in the product itself to appear on the home page. If this variable is empty, it reverts to using the first 30 words code from the AUG. The aim of this is to be able to put targeted keyword rich text on the home page which will not conflict with the actual products there but not look bad if we haven't had time to fill it in.

Recently, we have been trying to catch up with getting stuff on the site, putting SEO second for the time being. This has meant creating a breif 40 word desc for each item and copying this into the duplicates and it also appears on the home page under new products. The net result has been that the text is indexed for the home page first and the SPP page goes supplemental. Bad news. We figured this might happen but took the descision to go for it as a quick fix to get all stock listed.

The very best solution is to have unique text wherever a duplicate appears. It's hard work but it pays in spades. I decided to experiment with what other sites seem to do (duplicate content) and you usually end up with a non relevent page being indexed over the SPP.

Experiment done. Back to the unique text...

[Mike Hughes]

Nonetheless, I DO take your point Mike, but on this occasion feel that the new thread is justified.

Sorry, I wan't suggesting there shouldn't be a thread on this or anything. Merely that if you want to find out what percentage of content needs to be unique then you need to start reading up the on the subject. There's been huge amounts of discussion on this (not on the forum, which is why I suggested a google search rather than forum search) and unsurprisingly views vary.

As I've said before though, the percentage figure, whatever it is or may be, isn't really important. The important thing is to write unique content rather than try and fudge existing stuff.

Mike

[RuralWeb]

I think we are "duplicating" posts now, as Mike says we have been here many times and to answer your question - there is no published % for duplicate content - only Google know this and anything people say is only speculation. SEO specialists know what works for them and you are unlikely to get any of them to say what they do as that is thier business and how they make money - its a bit like designers giving away free templates.

SEO is big business and part of the marketing effort is to create confusion and panic - then offer a solution at a price.

[Buzby]

Just to throw a spanner in the works.

I sell a plain wedding ring which is available in 5mm, 6mm, 7mm and 8mm widths. The 4 rings are exactly the same in every way except for the width.

The rings are very plain and it is very difficult to be descriptive about them at the best of times, even more difficult to have 4 different lots of content.

As a result each item has a (99%) duplication of content but when you search for it by product name as described on the website, each comes up on the first page of google, in the top 3. Each name is identical except for the prefix of width.

If Google penalises for content why are all 4 products showing on page 1 when all I have to do is change 1 character in the search term?

I can understand (and agree) with not having duplicated content, but some times content does need to be duplicated, even to a spammy level in order to give the visitor the experience that they require. For instance, if your website is a specialist site selling 100 types of widgets then every product and page name would include the word "widget" this would be incorrectly interpreted as spam.

Could it be the case that although Google recognises duplicate content it has worked out that they are different products in their own right and worthy of listing under slightly different search terms.

Kind regards

Jason

[RuralWeb]

Ok in an attempt to put this whole subject to bed this is what google says:

Duplicate content



Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:

• Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
• Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
• Printer-only versions of web pages

However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.
Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a "regular" and "printer" version of each article, and neither of these is blocked in robots.txt or with a noindex meta tag, we'll choose one of them to list. In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

There are some steps you can take to proactively address duplicate content issues, and ensure that visitors see the content you want them to.

• Consider blocking pages from indexing: Rather than letting Google's algorithms determine the "best" version of a document, you may wish to help guide us to your preferred version. For instance, if you don't want us to index the printer versions of your site's articles, disallow those directories or make use of regular expressions in your robots.txt file.
• Use 301s: If you've restructured your site, use 301 redirects ("RedirectPermanent") in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, Googlebot, and other spiders. (In Apache, you can do this with an .htaccess file; in IIS, you can do this through the administrative console.)
• Be consistent: Try to keep your internal linking consistent. For example, don't link to http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm.
• Use top-level domains: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top-level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We're more likely to know that www.example.de contains Germany-focused content, for instance, than www.example.com/de or de.example.com.
• Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to block the version on their sites with robots.txt.
• Use Webmaster Tools to tell us how you prefer your site to be indexed: You can tell Google your preferred domain (for example, www.example.com or http://example.com).
• Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details.
• Avoid publishing stubs: Users don't like seeing "empty" pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. For example, don't publish pages for which you don't yet have real content. If you do create placeholder pages, use robots.txt to block these from being crawled.
• Understand your content management system: Make sure you're familiar with how content is displayed on your web site. Blogs, forums, and related systems often show the same content in multiple formats. For example, a blog entry may appear on the home page of a blog, in an archive page, and in a page of other entries with the same label.
• Minimize similar content: If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one. For instance, if you have a travel site with separate pages for two cities, but the same information on both pages, you could either merge the pages into one page about both cities or you could expand each page to contain unique content about each city.

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.
However, if our review indicated that you engaged in deceptive practices and your site has been removed from our search results, review your site carefully. If your site has been removed from our search results, review our webmaster guidelines for more information. Once you've made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.
If you find that another site is duplicating your content by scraping (misappropriating and republishing) it, it's unlikely that this will negatively impact your site's ranking in Google search results pages. If you do spot a case that's particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and request removal of the other site from Google's index.

Thats it so make of it what you will - people here are trying to make something black and white when it is much more complex.

[jont]

people here are trying to make something black and white when it is much more complex.

indeed ... there are a million shades of grey between depending on individual circumstances. As ever the only solution is to change one things and sit back and watch what happens - which is essentially what SEO companies do over many many sites to get a benchmark on what is doing what.

[Jarvis]

Thanks for the 'Google' perspective on this Mal.

Interesting phrasing used by them at the start of the article which implies that there is human intervention in the process.

Again, towards the start of the article, it does rather bare out what I am suggesting, that 'honest' duplication is recognised and not penalised.

Regarding what you say about people trying to make something black and white when it is much more complex, I think that it would be more accurate to say that we are attempting to understand one element of what is perceived to be a complex issue.

With regard to SEO businesses making capital out of 'confusion and panic', personally I view most, (not all), SEO 'experts' in the same way as I view Astrologers, Palmists and Faith Healers; each believes in what they do but base their trade on misinformation and myth.

However, I am not sure that we touch too deeply into SEO, when trying to understand, and thus avoid the potential pitfalls of, the specific use of duplicated products in Actinic.

One thing that is apparent is that there is divided opinion and a lack of clear understanding on this specific topic.

Nonetheless, it is not impossible to measure it and it should not difficult to set up a robust experiment in order to gain some decent data to work from. I can feel the academic in me rising to this one. I'll have a think on how it could be approached.

[Mike Hughes]

Nonetheless, it is not impossible to measure it and it should not difficult to set up a robust experiment in order to gain some decent data to work from. I can feel the academic in me rising to this one. I'll have a think on how it could be approached.

Waste of time but go ahead if you want to try it.

Mike