Empty public profiles are viewed as duplicate content. What to do?
-
Hi!
I manage a social networking site. We have a lot of public user profiles that are viewed as duplicate content. This is because these users haven't filled out any public profile info and thus the profiles are "empty" (except for the name). Is this something I should worry about? If yes, what are my options to solve this?
Thanks!
-
This is totally down to a matter of personal preference. I'd be looking for something in the way of original text. A good way is to ask more question then total up the number of words in their answers. You can also flesh that out by introducing snippets from recent activity, connections etc. Do though try to include something in the way of original content in order to turn off the no-index.
I think your example isn't bad. Add a personal slogan, or line of introduction and it is probably enough.
-
Ok thanks! How can I determine the threshold for having profiles indexed? A common case is where a profile has a name, a company name and 1-3 links to other social profiles (twitter, linkedin etc..). Would a page like this be interesting enough to index? From a visitor's perspective I think it is; not necessarily for the content, but it has enough potential for click-through (to the company profile or to signup because the the visitor wants to connect with the owner of the profile).
-
That is quite easily dealt with. Set some minimum levels and add a meta noindex to those profiles that don't meet that standard.
If you combine that with encouragement to fill out profiles ("Your profile is only 10% complete. Add your education now for +3%" etc) then you can solve the duplicate issue and also the underlying cause. As they get completed they can start getting indexed again and you have a better website at the end of it.
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
-
Duplicate and thin content - advanced..
Hi Guys Two issues to sort out.. So we have a website that lists products and has many pages for: a) The list pages - that lists all the products for that area.
On-Page Optimization | | nick-name123
b) The detailed pages - that when click into from the list page, will list the specific product in full. On the list page, we perhaps have half the description written down, when clicked into you see the full description.
If you search in google for a phrase on the detailed page, you will see results for that specific page including 'multiple' list pages where it is on. For example, lets say we are promoting 'trees' which are situated in Manhatten. And we are also promoting trees in Brooklyn, there is a crossover. So a tree listed in Manhatten will also be listen in brooklyn as its close by (not from America so don't laugh if I have areas muddled)
We then have quite a few pages with the same content as a result. I read a post a while back from the mighty Cutts who said not to worry about the duplicate unless its spammy, but what is good for one person, is spammy to another.. Does anyone have any ideas as to if this is a genuine problem and how you would solve? Also, we know we have alot of thin content on the site, but we dont know how to identify it. It's a large site so needs something automated (I think).. Thanks in advance Nick0 -
Duplicate content list by SEOMOZ
Hi Friends, I am seeing lot of duplicate (about 10%) from the crawl report of SEOMOZ. The report says, "Duplicate Page Content" But the urls it listed have different title, different url and also different content. I am not sure how to fix this issue.. My site has both Indian cinema news and photo gallery. The problme mainly coming in photo gallery posts. for example: this is the main url of a post. apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos . But in this post, each image is a link to its enlarged images (default wordpress). The problem is coming with each individual image with in this post. examples of SEOMOZ report 3 individual urls as duplicate content...from the same above post.: http://apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos/poonam-kaur-hot-photo-shoot-stills-4 http://apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos/poonam-kaur-hot-photo-shoot-stills-3 http://apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos/poonam-kaur-hot-photo-shoot-stills-2 Some body please advise me.. Appreciate your help.
On-Page Optimization | | ksnath0 -
How to fix Duplicate Page Title
I have so many Duplicate Page Title issue on my website. www.soobumimphotography.com Though I had to use NAME + Area + Photographer on every title page so ended up something like this San Antonio Sports Photographer | Soobumim Photography : San Antonio Wedding Photographers | Soobumim Photography http://www.soobumimphotography.com/chicago-cubs-at-houston-astros-mlb-soobumim-photography/ What's the best way to fix this problem? Should I delete them? Redirect? - to be honest, I don't know how. I am using Yoast plugin
On-Page Optimization | | BistosAmerica0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content (index.htm)
I get an error of "**Issue:**Duplicate Page Content" for the following pages in the SEOMOZ Crawl Diagnostics. But these pages are the same one! Duhhhh.... Is there a way to hide this false error? http://www.stdtime.com/ http://www.stdtime.com/index.htm BTW, I also get "**Issue:**Duplicate Page Title" for this page. Another false error...
On-Page Optimization | | raywhite0 -
Mobile blog creating duplicate title and content issues
My site is set up with a mobile website and after running the on page SEO report on moz it is returning multiple errors for duplicate title tags and duplicate content all related to the mobile website being a direct reflection of the main site. I want to know if this is really an issue. I'm sure Google actually knows the difference between my main site and the mobile version. Do I really need to go through each individual mobile page and change each page title and modify all the content? I really would like to avoid doing this but at the same time would like to fully optimize my site. Any advice is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | shiftins0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi I have Duplicate content that i do sent understand 1 - www.example.dk 2- www.example.dk/ I thought i was the same page, whit and without the / Hope someone can help 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | seopeter290 -
Is it better to drip feed content?
Hi All, I've assembled a collection of 5 closely related articles each about 700 words for publishing by linking to them from on one of my pages and would appreciate some advice on the role out of these articles. Backround: My site is a listings based site and a majority of the content is published on my competitors sites too. This is because advertisers are aiming to spread there adverts wide with the hope of generating more responses. The page I'm targeting ranks 11th but I would like to link it to some new articles and guides to beef it up a bit. My main focus is to rank better for the page that links to these articles and as a result I write up an introduction to the article/guide which serves as my unique content. Question: Is it better to drip feed the new articles onto the site or would it be best to get as much unique content on as quickly as possible to increase the ratio of unique content vs. external duplicate content on the page that links to these articles**?** Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Mulith0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5