{"id":8619,"date":"2019-11-05T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T12:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/?p=8619"},"modified":"2022-07-11T10:09:42","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T10:09:42","slug":"setting-the-record-straight-about-duplicate-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/setting-the-record-straight-about-duplicate-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting The Record Straight About Duplicate Content"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\"><p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<p>Hello Everybody<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Today I wanted to set the record straight about duplicate content in SEO, There are many myths around duplicate content like it causes a penalty and that their pages will compete against each other and hurt their site. as this is a big topic and lots of different opinions &amp; misunderstandings. In this post I will back up what I am saying with facts and references from google and others.<\/p>\n<p>I see community threads, forum posts &amp; SEO blogs posting articles that show that they don\u2019t understand how duplicate content really works.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s set the record straight about duplicate content once and for all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>What is Duplicate Content?<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/66359?hl=en\">Google<\/a> :<\/p>\n<p><i>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<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>People mistake duplicate content for a penalty because of how Google handles it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I have heard lots of different misconceptions on duplicate content so let\u2019s think about the most popular one for a second &amp; break it down.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Google penalises or blacklists a site and the site ranks lower in various query results.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>But lots of questions come to mind like,<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What if it\u2019s something out of your control?, Scrapers take your content against your wishes.<\/li>\n<li>What if it\u2019s something you do purposefully? Like re-posting guest articles or a secondary site or syndicating content from news sites.<\/li>\n<li>What if you have a template you use for interviews with the same questions repeated week after week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>So<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Is that duplicate content?<i>Yes.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Is Google going to blacklist or penalise your site for it?*No<b>*.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To be honest If you\u2019re not Malware, A Scam, or Spam, you probably will not be blacklisted.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When Penalising a site, Google has said numerous times, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/mQZY7EmjbMA\">they do not penalise for duplicate content<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>if there are two sites with the same content, their search algorithms will determine which website is the most relevant and provides the most value to the users, and then display that result.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>According to Matt Cutts, <a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/googles-matt-cutts-25-30-of-the-webs-content-is-duplicate-content-thats-okay-180063\">30% of the web is duplicate content<\/a> .<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A recent study based on data from a site auditor tool called Raven Tools found, that <a href=\"https:\/\/raventools.com\/studies\/onpageseo\/#duplicate\">29% of pages had duplicate content<\/a> .<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Google knows scraped content really well. Sites like this are kinda easy to find if you think about. In fact, you\u2019ve probably came across content that you might have thought was stolen before and saw how horrible the website was. Normally full of ads, badly formatted.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why Google mainly looks at search intent. If you have duplicate content, if it is valuable content &amp; the rest of the site is being visited by users, you will be displayed in search results over websites with the exact same article.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Extra Tip:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>You can see duplicate content in Google Search by adding \u201c &amp;filter=0 \u201c to the end of the URLand removing the filtering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Google Hates Thin Content, Not Duplicate<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I know it\u2019s annoying to think there is another word for duplicate content but its more of a classification to help explain irrelevant duplicate content that google sees as useless.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So why would your site would be prioritised in search rankings over a duplicate?<\/p>\n<p>The duplicate sites are full of <a href=\"https:\/\/yoast.com\/what-is-thin-content\/\">thin content<\/a> .<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>to put it simply that means that articles on the sites are<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Too short<\/li>\n<li>The site itself is an unfocused mishmash of topics across many niches and industries<\/li>\n<li>It probably has an incredibly high bounce rate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Or, to put it another way, they\u2019re useless posts on useless sites<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Panda\u2019s &#8211; Duplicate Content Update:<\/h1>\n<p>The Google Panda Update was mainly designed to reduce the ranking for low quality sites.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>there are a number of factors to look at in Panda that define duplicate content on Google.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>This includes:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Any domain or page with a lot of thin &amp; duplicate content<\/li>\n<li>Low or No original content<\/li>\n<li>Timing &amp; Frequency of the thin &amp; duplicate content<\/li>\n<li>identical content on every page and having multiple<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>However, it\u2019s not just copy\/paste scraper sites that create thin content.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>No, you can create plenty of thin content of your own without much trouble. So you need to be careful.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keyword stuffing, the thin-content hole. this is when you awkwardly stuff in the keywords &amp; phrase multiple times<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Posts that you read and sound like it solves a problem &amp; then use keyword stuffing while never answering the solution to the problem just to get more word count.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>if you write too-short articles, that\u2019s also thin content.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You want to answer the question, you also want to go into detail about it and provide more value.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You want to link out to internal pages or posts you\u2019ve written on the same topic, as well as a good ratio of external links. This shows Google and other search engines that you\u2019ve done your homework &amp; care about providing value, also if you link out to internal pages when you do get scraped, you get a some links back to your site that if not to spammy might maybe bring some value.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>The Problem Of E-Commerce Sites is Thin Content:<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thin content a common problem for e-commerce sites. Low-quality sales web pages are considered as having <a href=\"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/new-panda-update-rolling-google-takes-another-stand-thin-content\/116947\/\">thin content<\/a> . Such pages are unnecessary and seen as inappropriate by search engines because they have a bad UX (user experience). Normally these pages will also have a high bounce rates because users leave pretty quickly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Getting around search engines is like trying to get something through airport security that you shouldn\u2019t be taking on a plane. It most likely isn\u2019t going to work, &amp; the consequences when caught are <b>BAD<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Direct impact of bad content can lead to:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n<li>Bad search engine rankings<\/li>\n<li>Low web traffic<\/li>\n<li>Bad UX (user experience)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>E-Commerce sites should try be careful in publishing thin content as then are already on the back foot.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>What are Google\u2019s thoughts on duplicate content?<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2008\/09\/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html\">Susan Moska posted on the Google Webmaster blog in 2008<\/a> :<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><i>Let\u2019s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There\u2019s no such thing as a \u201cduplicate content penalty.\u201d At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><i>You can help your fellow webmasters by not perpetuating the myth of duplicate content penalties!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sorry we failed you, Susan<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m going to summarise what we know &amp; all the best parts, but If you would like to read more I recommend reading over the posts below as well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Duplicate content does not get your site penalised.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Algorithms are designed to prevent duplicate content from affecting Things. They group the various versions &amp; the \u201cBest\u201d URL in the group is displayed, and they consolidate various signals witch are things like links from pages within that group to the one being shown.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>They have said <a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2007\/06\/duplicate-content-summit-at-smx.html\">\u201cIf you don\u2019t want to worry about sorting through duplication on your site, you can let us worry about it instead.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Google is trying to figure out witch is the original source of the content and to display that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Users want diversity in the search results and not the same article, consolidating and showing one version.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Duplicate content is not designed to get normal helpful content its is designed to get those who its intent is to manipulate search results.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If someone is duplicating your content without permission, You can request to have it removed by filing a request under the <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/legal\/answer\/1120734\">Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a> .<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dont block crawlers on your duplicate content pages. If they can\u2019t see all the versions, they can\u2019t consolidate and rank the signals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Worst case from this filtering is that a less desirable version of the page will be shown in search results.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>3 Myths that are Wrong:<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>#1: Scrapers or Crawlers Will Hurt Your Website<\/h1>\n<p>When people see a scraper site copies one there his posts, he quickly disavows the links to the site.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you read Google\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/66359?hl=en\">Duplicate Content Guidelines<\/a> or the <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/2648487?hl=en\">Guidelines for Disavows<\/a> . Some sites get scraped a lot. They don\u2019t pay any attention to scrapers &amp; they don\u2019t fear duplicate content.<\/p>\n<p>Scrapers don\u2019t help or hurt you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Do you think that a little blog with no original writing &amp; no visitors can fool Google or bing?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No. It just isn\u2019t relevant<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The links on the scraped version pass little or no authority, but you may get the occasional referral visit.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Increasing Content Quality:<\/h1>\n<p>The Google Webmaster Blog has guidelines for high-quality. By incorporating Panda algorithms, it means using high quality and original content to get better rankings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You can use Search Console to tell you about the Google crawling route of your site. On finding any identical content or remove it from your site completely.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Make use of Crawlers, which alerts you to any duplication.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Redirect entire duplicate content to canonical URLs and save yourself from any trouble.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Link to the original source of the content, in case you have tried all other options and failed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Report any breach of copyright to Google. For this, fill the ownership form.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>#2: Unoriginal Content Will Hurt Your Overall Ranking Across Your Websites Domain<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I am yet to see any evidence that non-original content hurt a site\u2019s overall ranking, but I have heard it happens on a truly extreme case<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So what is the extreme case?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Timing, If all the content appears at the same time<\/li>\n<li>Volume, If there are hundreds of instances of the same text<\/li>\n<li>Context, If their is a homepage copy on a brand new domain<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to imagine how this could get flagged as spam.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Many sites, including some of the most popular blogs on the internet, frequently repost articles that first appeared somewhere else. They don\u2019t expect this content to rank, but they also know it won\u2019t hurt the credibility of their domain.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>#3: Republishing Your Guest Posts Will Hurt Your Domain<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>it\u2019s tempting to republish guest posts on your own blog &amp; there is nothing wrong with it as long as you follow the basic rules like Rel= or simply waiting for google to index the first version. Some big blogs actually encourage you to republish the post on your own site after a few weeks go by. search engines are not confused. In some very rare cases they might ask you to add a Tag (HTML tag) to your republished post.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>_____________________________________________<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Some causes of duplicate content that happens by accident:<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s further understand how duplicate content is caused by accident.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The solution will depend on the particular situation<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Duplicate Content On Site:<\/h3>\n<p>On-site duplicate content is when the same content appears on internal pages of a site.<\/p>\n<p>Below are some common areas where On-site duplicate content can alter SEO rankings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Non-Canonical URLs<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Session IDs<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Shopping Cart URLs<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Internal Search Results<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Duplicate URL Paths<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Product Review Pages<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>WWW or Non-WWW URLs<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Category Pages<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Homepage Content<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Duplicate Content Off Site :<\/h3>\n<p>When similar content is found on more than one website, it is classed as duplicate content and then they make a choice on what link is best. This can be due to a few things.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Product Narration<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Testing Sites<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Product Feed Specification<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Content Syndication<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Content Scraping<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We will be adding how to\u2019s over the coming months and will link them above.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>I Think We Need To Calm down, People.<\/h1>\n<p>To be honest In my view, It\u2019s a massive overreaction.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><i>GoogleBot visits most sites every day. If it finds a copied version of something a week later on another site, it knows where the original appeared. GoogleBot doesn\u2019t get angry and penalise. It moves on. That\u2019s pretty much all you need to know<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Google knows, They\u2019ve been separating originals from copies since 1997, long before the phrase \u201cDuplicate Content\u201d became a buzzword.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you disagree and\/or you think you have research to add please comment<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thanks<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Other Post Sources or Helpful Links:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2007\/06\/duplicate-content-summit-at-smx.html\">Duplicate content summit at SMX<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/6080548?hl=en\">the impact of duplicate URLs<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2008\/06\/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html\">Duplicate content &#8211;<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2008\/06\/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html\">scrapers<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/66359\">Duplicate content &#8211;<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/66359\">Search Console<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2006\/12\/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html\">Deftly &#8211; duplicate content<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com\/2007\/09\/google-duplicate-content-caused-by-url.html\">Google<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com\/2007\/09\/google-duplicate-content-caused-by-url.html\">&#8211; duplicate content caused by URL parameters<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello Everybody   Today I wanted to set the record straight about duplicate content in SEO, There are many myths around duplicate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"order-bump-settings":[],"_wpfnl_thankyou_order_overview":"on","_wpfnl_thankyou_order_details":"on","_wpfnl_thankyou_billing_details":"on","_wpfnl_thankyou_shipping_details":"on"},"categories":[274,91,214,77,73,223],"tags":[119,127,133],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdthomson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}