Product descriptions, when do they become classed as duplicate content, how different do they have to be?

[PeterLeatherland]

I look after 3 sites which have a lot of crossover on products. We have 1000s of products and I've made it a requirement that we give each it's on description on each of the sites. This sounds like the right thing to but it's very hard for our content writers to write three different versions descriptions, especially when we have variations on the products so potentially writing unique product descriptions for 4-5 very similar products on three separate sites. We've worked very hard to create unique content deep through the site on all categories, subcategories and tag combinations and along with the other SEO work we've done over the last couple of years is producing great results.

My question is now far do we have to go? I'm busy writing some product descriptions for a 3rd party site for some of our products, the easy thing to do is just copy and paste but I want Google to see the descriptions as unique. Whilst all SEO advice will say 'write unique descriptions' from a practical point of view this isn't especially useful as there doesn't really seem to be much guidance on how different they need to be. I gather we can't just move around the paragraphs or jumble up sentences a bit but it is easier to work from a description and change it than it is to start from a blank slate (our products range form being very interesting and unique, to quite everyday so sometimes tough to create varied unique content for).

Does anyone know of any guidance or evidence of just how clever the Google algorithm is and how close content has to be before it becomes classed as the same or similar?

Thanks

Pete

[ATP]

Hi Pete,

Andy nails most things so ill just talk about the "how different part".

Google is very good at identifying the structure of a sentence and determining its meaning. To simplify things I always look at it like this

"It is warm" is the same as "It is hot"

changing text like this and hoping its unique is asking for trouble. Instead try to write as if you are a different personality appealing to a different type of person within the context of the site.

Site: 1 Mr technical writes the content for this site. Your all about the technical features, why they outshine the other specifications and why thats good.

Site 2: Mr indulgent writes for this site, he is less concerned with the technical and is all about actually using the product. He talks about the ease of use and how great if feels to use etc.

Site 3: Mr in the middle, he has a descent amount of respect for the technical elements and mentions them, and has a more speculative approach of explaining why this would be good.

These three personalities all talk very differently, use a different pool of words, create these persona's and be them as you write. This will give you the base difference to make identical information very different.

To combat similar products, my approach has been to not try to distinguish them too much but to engage with the similar products and talk about them. For example product A is the same as product B except product B has a special paint on it that makes it look good so it costs more. So product A is all about value, its the cheapest in the range so great value for money, affordable but with all the necessary perks. Product B is luxurious, not only does it have everything product A has but looks dang good and is a real head turner.

This approach allows you include all the important content needed to get the word count up and make it a good page but present in a way that is very different.

[BradsDeals]

Anecdotally... when Panda first hit back in 2011, the vast majority of coupon sites fell off the map. We did not. The difference was that while everyone else was scraping product descriptions and titles etc., we were writing everything by hand.

[CleverPhD]

Great answer!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Pete,

I think it's important to remember that Google doesn't penalise duplicate internal content...

John Mueller - Google
John clearly states  “We don’t have a duplicate content penalty. It’s not that we would demote a site for having a lot of duplicate content.” and “You don’t get penalized for having this kind of duplicate content” in which he was talking about very similar pages. John says to “provide… real unique value” on your pages.

There is no direct guidance on just how similar 'similar' needs to be before it is picked up as duplicate - if it were all on one site, it would be less of an issue, but as you have these crossovers on 3 sites, this might cause problems.

Try and avoid templated copy with a few changes because this can be seen as 'boilerplate' which Google doesn't like either.

I'll be honest, carrying the same products on different sites is a bit of a dangerous game in most cases, but there are exceptions.

Lets say you have 3 sites that are Football, Cricket & Tennis. One product that might be the same could be socks. If you differentiate here and write about socks for each sport (and each site), then you will be OK, even if it is the same product.

I hope this makes sense?

-Andy