Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Handling of Duplicate Content
-
I just recently signed and joined the moz.com system.
During the initial report for our web site it shows we have lots of duplicate content. The web site is real estate based and we are loading IDX listings from other brokerages into our site.
If though these listings look alike, they are not. Each has their own photos, description and addresses. So why are they appear as duplicates – I would assume that they are all too closely related. Lots for Sale primarily – and it looks like lazy agents have 4 or 5 lots and input the description the same.
Unfortunately for us, part of the IDX agreement is that you cannot pick and choose which listings to load and you cannot change the content. You are either all in or you cannot use the system.
How should one manage duplicate content like this? Or should we ignore it?
Out of 1500+ listings on our web site it shows 40 of them are duplicates.
-
Obviously Dirk is right but again you will lose the opportunity to rank in search engines from the related key phrases and if you have played around with real estate industry before, you will have an idea about how difficult it is to rank and what are the advantages of ranking for that particular term.
In my opinion, duplication on page works like when the page is 60 to 70% identical to another page on the website and this is exactly what is happening in your case. I do agree the fact that you cannot change the descriptions but you can actually add the section on the page that explain more about the property. A custom box where you can include your custom written content.
I agree it’s a lot of work at your end but at the end of the day you will get a chance to rank well for those important key phrases that can offer you great amount of conversions.
Just a thought!
-
Nice idea - I have already started this. I just now have to include it for each listing. Thanks!!
-
You could point a canonical to the original source (in fact that is the way Google prefers it). It's a great solution if it's you who's syndicating the content. However, if you would do that, you would loose any opportunity to get ranked on that content.
Googles view: (source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en).
"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."
The big problem with duplicate content across different domains is that it's up to google to decide which site is going to be displayed. This could be the site which is syndicating the content, but it could also be a site which has the highest authority.
In your case - if possible I would try to enrich the content you syndicate with content from other sources. Examples could be interesting stats on the neighbourhood like avg. age, income, nearby schools, number of house sold & average price...etc or other types of content that might interest potential buyers. This way your content becomes more unique and probably more interesting (and engaging) for your visitors (and for Google)
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
Pretty much everyone has the same feed. Would it be wise to include the original source. Seeing we are getting the data from REALTOR.ca - point the canonical to where the listing comes from. I am new to this stuff - so I am hoping that I am getting this right.
Thanks T
-
Hi,
This is question which is asked quite often on Moz Q&A. Pages that have a big chunk of source code in common are sometimes considered as duplicated - even if the content is quite different. Recently they did a post on the tech blog on how they identify duplicates (it's quite technical stuff - but still interesting to read - https://moz.com/devblog/near-duplicate-detection/)
If only address & image are different but description is identical - the page will probably be considered as a duplicate by the Moz bot. If it's only for 40 of 1500 listings, I wouldn't worry to much about it, especially because you are unable the content anyway.
I would be more worried if other real estate companies would use the same feed and hence provide exactly the same content on their side, not only the 40 you mention but the full listing.
rgds
Dirk
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 content and 404 errors
I apologize in advance, but I am an SEO novice and my understanding of code is very limited. Moz has issued a lot (several hundred) of duplicate content and 404 error flags on the ecommerce site my company takes care of. For the duplicate content, some of the pages it says are duplicates don't even seem similar to me. additionally, a lot of them are static pages we embed images of size charts that we use as popups on item pages. it says these issues are high priority but how bad is this? Is this just an issue because if a page has similar content the engine spider won't know which one to index? also, what is the best way to handle these urls bringing back 404 errors? I should probably have a developer look at these issues but I wanted to ask the extremely knowledgeable Moz community before I do 🙂
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Duplicate content on job sites
Hi, I have a question regarding job boards. Many job advertisers will upload the same job description to multiple websites e.g. monster, gumtree, etc. This would therefore be viewed as duplicate content. What is the best way to handle this if we want to ensure our particular site ranks well? Thanks in advance for the help. H
Technical SEO | | HiteshP0 -
How do I handle duplicate content of the same product in Multiple product categories?
I am building a BigCommerce store for selling framed art. Many of the pieces of art will fall in more than one product category. Let's say I have a framed print of a photograph of a western landscape. This piece of art would fit into these categories; "western", "landscape", and "photography". I would have three pages with duplicate content for just this one framed print. Will google give me less page rank due to this? Can all the link juice be given to just one of the three categories by use of rel=canonical? If so, does anyone know how to do this for a bigcommerce site? I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks, Kelly
Technical SEO | | Kelly_S0 -
Duplicate content problem from an index.php file
Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Duplicate content and http and https
Within my Moz crawl report, I have a ton of duplicate content caused by identical pages due to identical pages of http and https URL's. For example: http://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations https://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations The strange thing is that 99% of these URL's are not sensitive in nature and do not require any security features. No credit card information, booking, or carts. The web developer cannot explain where these extra URL's came from or provide any further information. Advice or suggestions are welcome! How do I solve this issue? THANKS MOZZERS
Technical SEO | | hawkvt10 -
Whats with the backslash in the url adding as duplicate content?
Is this a bug or something that needs to be addressed? If so, just use a redirect?
Technical SEO | | Boogily0 -
CGI Parameters: should we worry about duplicate content?
Hi, My question is directed to CGI Parameters. I was able to dig up a bit of content on this but I want to make sure I understand the concept of CGI parameters and how they can affect indexing pages. Here are two pages: No CGI parameter appended to end of the URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html CGI parameter appended to the end of the URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html?pagewanted=2&ref=homepage&src=mv Questions: Can we safely say that CGI parameters = URL parameters that append to the end of a URL? Or are they different? And given that you have rel canonical implemented correctly on your pages, search engines will move ahead and index only the URL that is specified in that tag? Thanks in advance for giving your insights. Look forward to your response. Best regards, Jackson
Technical SEO | | jackson_lo0 -
Does 'framing' a website create duplicate content?
Something I have not come across before, but hope others here are able offer advice based on experience: A client has independently created a series of mini-sites, aimed at targeting specific locations. The tactic has worked very well and they have achieved a large amount of well targeted traffic as a result. Each mini-site is different but then in the nav, if you want to view prices or go to the booking page, that then links to what at first appears to be their main site. However, you then notice that the URL is actually situated on the mini-site. What they have done is 'framed' the main site so that it appears exactly the same even when navigating through this exact replica site. Checking the code, there is almost nothing there - in fact there is actually no content at all. Below the head, there is a piece of code: <frameset rows="*" framespacing=0 frameborder=0> <frame src="[http://www.example.com](view-source:http://www.yellowskips.com/)" frameborder=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0> <noframes>Your browser does not support frames. Click [here](http://www.example.com) to view.noframes> frameset> Given that main site content does not appear to show in the source code, do we have an issue with duplicate content? This issue is that these 'referrals' are showing in Analytics, despite the fact that the code does not appear in the source, which is slightly confusing for me. They have done this without consultation and I'm very concerned that this could potentially be creating duplicate content of their ENTIRE main site on dozens of mini-sites. I should also add that there are no links to the mini-sites from the main site, so if you guys advise that this is creating duplicate content, I would not be worried about creating a link-wheel if I advise them to link directly to the main site rather than the framed pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0
