Duplicate content for hotel websites - the usual nightmare? is there any solution other than producing unique content?
-
Hiya Mozzers I often work for hotels. A common scenario is the hotel / resort has worked with their Property Management System to distribute their booking availability around the web... to third party booking sites - with the inventory goes duplicate page descriptions sent to these "partner" websites.
I was just checking duplication on a room description - 20 loads of duplicate descriptions for that page alone - there are 200 rooms - so I'm probably looking at 4,000 loads of duplicate content that need rewriting to prevent duplicate content penalties, which will cost a huge amount of money.
Is there any other solution? Perhaps ask booking sites to block relevant pages from search engines?
-
Hi Kurt - very true - they should be taking the time for sure. I think part of problem is legacy of duplicate content - glad I'm not in their shoes!
Yup - rewriting is what I'm doing for those guys - inc new ideas for engaging content. Will let you know how it goes - an interesting project for me as never worked with a directory before!
-
Happy to help.
You may actually want to recommend to the brokers that they take the time to create original content. It's in their best interest since I assume they get paid for booking rooms/properties and they'd probably book more if they got more traffic by having original content.
In regards to that directory site, it's likely Google just decided they weren't the version of the content they wanted to display. If everything else is fine with that site, I'd bet just rewriting the pages to have original content (not just spun) would change their situation dramatically.
-
Thanks for your wise feedback EGOL - appreciated.
-
Hi Kurt and thanks for your great feedback there - funnily enough have just been writing unique content for these TPIs this week - so they have something different to work if they don't want to grapple with duplicate content issues - I've noticed the clever guys are now employing their own copywriters to produce unique content, yet many do not.
Just been looking at stats for a certain directory site and they've progressively lost traffic since panda struck - there's absolutely nothing wrong with their website (just completed site audit) beyond heavy duplication issues (as they've been copying and pasting property descriptions through to own site).
-
This is exactly the kind of situation where rel=canonical is supposed to be used. Rarely is there going to be 100% exact match because in most cases the use of the duplicated content is on different sites which have different headers, footers, nav menus, etc.
Put the canonical tag on your own site and then ask the booking sites if they would put them on their pages, indicating that your page is the canonical page. If they won't, then publish your page a week or so before you give out the content to the booking sites, making sure to use the canonical tag on your own site. That way, Google can find it first.
Another option would be to write unique content for your own site and then send out something different to all the booking sites. Yes, they will all have duplicate content, but your site won't. So, you should rank just fine and they will have to compete to see who can get in the listings.
Keep in mind that there isn't really a duplicate content penalty. When Google sees duplicates, they just don't include all of the duplicates in their search results. They choose the one they think it the canonical version and the others are left out. Not every page gets listed, but no site is penalized either.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
I agree with EGOL and was going to suggest the same thing rel=canonical
-
It is supposed to be used on exact match duplicates. However, I know that it works on less than exact match. How far it can be stretched, I have no idea.
-
Can you use rel=canonical effectively if the duplication of a page is extensive yet only partial? in this instance I'm sometimes seeing say 3 paragraph room descriptions - e.g. 1st para carbon copy, yet para 2 and 3 include duplicate content and some new content.
-
rel=canonical (if you started with original content and can get everyone everywhere to use it and none of it gets stolen)
-
Hi luke,
I guess using the noindex parameter would be the best option here, no?
Best reagrds,
Michel
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
-
Fix Duplicate Content Before Migration?
My client has 2 Wordpress sites (A and B). Each site is 20 pages, with similar site structures, and 12 of the pages on A having nearly 100% duplicate content with their counterpart on B. I am not sure to what extent A and/or B is being penalized for this. In 2 weeks (July 1) the client will execute a rebrand, renaming the business, launching C, and taking down A and B. Individual pages on A and B will be 301 redirected to their counterpart on C. C will have a similar site structure to A and B. I expect the content will be freshened a bit, but may initially be very similar to the content on A and B. I have 3 questions: Given that only 2 weeks remain before the switchover - is there any purpose in resolving the duplicate content between A and B prior to taking them down? Will 301 redirects from penalized pages on A or B actually hurt the ranking of the destination page on C? If a page on C has the same content as its predecessor on A or B, could it be penalized for that, even though the page on A or B has since been taken down and replaced with a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | futumara0 -
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
What is best practise for markup in a nav bar, avoid duplicate content.
I'm wondering what's best practise for markup in the nav bar. So if we have <nav> Can we have headers in there, does it help? If we do, would a H1 confuse google as to wether that is the H1 of importance of the one in thein the </nav>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup0 -
Penalized for Similar, But Not Duplicate, Content?
I have multiple product landing pages that feature very similar, but not duplicate, content and am wondering if this would affect my rankings in a negative way. The main reason for the similar content is three-fold: Continuity of site structure across different products Similar, or the same, product add-ons or support options (resulting in exactly the same additional tabs of content) The product itself is very similar with 3-4 key differences. Three examples of these similar pages are here - although I do have different meta-data and keyword optimization through the pages. http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099pro.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099proEnt.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prodW2pro.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension
Hi there I have a new client who has two websites: http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | turnbullholdingsltd
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nz They are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content. What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain. Thanks in advance. Laurie0 -
Category Content Duplication
Does indexing category archive page for a blog cause duplications? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success After reading this article I am unsure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
HTTPS Duplicate Content?
I just recieved a error notification because our website is both http and https. http://www.quicklearn.com & https://www.quicklearn.com. My tech tells me that this isn't actually a problem? Is that true? If not, how can I address the duplicate content issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0 -
Affiliate Site Duplicate Content Question
Hi Guys I have been un-able to find a definite answer to this on various forums, your views on this will be very valuable. I am doing a few Amazon affiliate sites and will be pulling in product data from Amazon via a Wordpress plugin. The plugin pulls in titles, descriptions, images, prices etc, however this presents a duplicate content issue and hence I can not publish the product pages with amazon descriptions. Due to the large number of products, it is not feasible to re-write all descriptions, but I plan re-write descriptions and titles for 50% of the products and publish then with “index, follow” attribute. However, for the other 50%, what would be the best way to handle them? Should I publish them as “noindex,follow”? **- Or is there another solution? Many thanks for your time.**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBuck0