Duplicate Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, is it a problem?
-
Hi,
If i use same terms of use and privacy policy content across my websites, does it amounts to duplicate content issues? Does it affect my websites in any manner?
Regards
-
Duplicate content is one of many hundreds of factors. If you have a very well crafted site, highly optimized, and with a very strong inbound link profile, but only a couple pages (ones that are not highly relevant to your primary topical focus) are duplicate, the potential negative impact on your overall rankings will be minimal.
This is true for most SEO factors. If any single factor has a flaw, but it's not a flaw that applies to the whole site, that single factor is going to have minimum impact on the overall site.
-
You can do almost anything you wish on a "noindex" tagged page. You are telling the search engine bot to exclude the page from the search index, so the page should not affect your ranking.
The reason your site's # of pages is a factor, is your overall site is viewed as a whole. If you have a basic site with 10 pages, and there is a problem with 1 of the pages having duplicate content, then 10% of your site is affected, and this can impact how the search engine views your site. If your site hosted a forums with 10k pages, then that 1 page would represent 0.001 of your site, so the impact would not have any real effect.
-
Thanks for the helpful reply Alan! Can you please explain this - "If it's only a few pages, sure, duplicate content there could have an impact". How duplicate content issues vary between small and big sites? I was under the impression that number of pages do not have any influence in duplicate content.
Is it okay to use the same privacy policy and terms of use across different websites as long as i noindex,follow them?
-
How big is your site? If it's only a few pages, sure, duplicate content there could have an impact. But in reality, I expect your site is not primarily made up of keyword phrases that either of those pages would be optimized for, and that you have more than a few pages. If so, any "negative" aspect would not be severe.
Having said that, it really is best to just use a robots meta tag set to noindex,follow (my preference instead of blocking completely in the robots.txt file.
-
Thanks for the reply Ryan! But if i don't block it via robots.txt file or noindex tag, will it affect my site negatively? I mean the overall site
-
I would recommend blocking pages such as privacy policy, terms of use, legal, etc. It is unlikely these pages would ever bring traffic to your site. Even if they did, it is not going to be the quality traffic you desire.
In robots.txt you can add
Disallow: /pages/privacy/
substitute your local path for /pages/privacy/
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
-
Are FAQ's Pages Still Useful?
I know there has been a lot of discussion lately about FAQs pages and I'm wondering when and if they are still warranted useful and what if they have positive or negative effects on page rankings. Regards, John Brown
Content Development | | JohnBrown75
Essay Writer0 -
Is there a good tool for finding Duplicate Content?
Hi! Are there any recommendation voor Duplicate Content finder tools? Is it offered on MOZ (not the one that belongs to 'seo issues') or a different site?
Content Development | | Marketing-SurpriseFactory1 -
Can I use expired domain content on My Blog
Hello Expert, I wanted to know, can I use expired domain content on my blog channel. I have done many searches on google but couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Please help me to find out this.
Content Development | | vijay77960 -
Http://www.social-bookmarking.net is it good platform to use
I am just looking at different ways to attract traffic and i would like to know if anyone uses http://www.social-bookmarking.net and if so do they feel it is good for gaining traffic. i have used it before but never gained anything from it so maybe i am using it wrong, would love to hear your thoughts on it
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Typepad.com blog migration & duplicate content
I've migrated a typepad.com blog with a bunch of content (but little traffic) onto a hosted WordPress site under my own domain name (the way I should've done it in the first place). Now I don't want to confuse Google that the new site is duplicating content from the other site, so would I be better off with: 1) meta-refresh redirecting each typepad.com post to the same post on the new blog, or 2) just killing the typepad.com blog entirely so Google will not find duplicate posts anywhere. In favor of #2 is the fact that these posts get very little traffic today. I figure I will lose more traffic from duplicate content ranking penalties than from losing the posts themselves in the original blog. What do you think?
Content Development | | chriscrabtree0 -
New Magento store with lots of duplicate contect
Hi, I am fairly new to SEOmoz and would really appreciate some pointers. I have just received the results of my first crawl and I have over 1800 pages of duplicate content. this is an example Cream poplin slim fit mens business shirt from Jermyn Street Shirt Co. http://jsshirts.com.au/aylesbury-cream-poplin-slim-fit-shirt.html Heading other URL's indicates 10 My questions are what does this figure 10 represent? what do I need to do to remove this duplicate content. Thanks | | | | |
Content Development | | mullsey
| | | | |
| | | | |0 -
Will using online forum reviews create duplicate content issue?
We are looking at having a text box of 'What customers say' on our product pages using reviews written about us online to remain factual and wanted to know if this will create duplicate content issues? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | jannkuzel0