Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. Algorithm Updates
    4. Does omitted results shown by Google always mean that website has duplicate content?

    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.

    Does omitted results shown by Google always mean that website has duplicate content?

    Algorithm Updates
    5
    8
    5047
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • prsntsnh
      prsntsnh last edited by

      Google search results for a particular query was appearing in top 10 results but now the page appears but  only after clicking on the " omitted results by google."

      My website lists different businesses in a particular locality and sometimes results for different localities are same because we show results from nearby area if number of businesses in that locality (search by users) are less then 15.

      Will this be considered as "duplicate content"? If yes then what steps can be taken to resolve this issue?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • SlavaRybalka
        SlavaRybalka @prsntsnh last edited by

        It might go to supplemental index when:

        1. Content is not unique.
        2. No content at all or with very little content.
        3. You have pages, not determined to have content initially, such as sitemap, contact, Terms and Conditions, etc.
        4. Pages that don’t have titles/meta descriptions or have duplicate ones.
        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • JaneCopland
          JaneCopland @prsntsnh last edited by

          Hi Prashant,

          Yes - any URLs that are different are different in Google's eyes, unless the modifier is a # symbol.

          So if you have www.example.com/key#value12345 and www.example.com/key#valuexyzabc, then Google sees these as the same, i.e. www.example.com/key. They will ignore everything after the # character.

          All other query strings, etc., mean that the URL has changed and if the pages on those URLs are the same, it's duplicate content.

          I hope this helps.

          Cheers,

          Jane

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • prsntsnh
            prsntsnh @JaneCopland last edited by

            Thanks Jane,

            Will the following urls will be considered as two different urls?

            1. www.example.com/key=value1& key2=value2

            2. www.example.com/key2=value2 & key=value1

            JaneCopland 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • prsntsnh
              prsntsnh @Kingof5 last edited by

              Thanks David,

              I found that a few of these urls were not crawled by Googlebot for a month or so. Now when i checked the last crawled status using "cache:", i found out that these pages were crawled again only recently and probably that is why it is back in top 10 results (main index).

              I have one question: When does an url go into "Supplemental Index" ?

              SlavaRybalka 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • JaneCopland
                JaneCopland last edited by

                Hi Prashant,

                This sounds like removal due to duplication rather than DMCA - the omission is usually noted as being because of DMCA notices if they are the reason, e.g. http://img.labnol.org/images/2008/07/googlesearchdmcacomplaint.png

                Google likely sees these as duplicates, or near-dupes, as David has said,

                prsntsnh 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • Kingof5
                  Kingof5 last edited by

                  Digital Millennium Copyright Act being used here? No.

                  OP, it does sound like you have duplicate content issues. See what you can do to make those omitted pages more unique.

                  prsntsnh 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Saijo.George
                    Saijo.George last edited by

                    It's most likely because some one would have put a DMCA takedown on that Google search result. jump in to your Google WebMasterTools account and you should see some notification from Google about it.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • Sam09schulz

                      How long does google takes to crawl a single site ?

                      lately i have been thinking , when a  crawler visits an already visited site  or indexed site, whats the duration of its scanning?

                      Algorithm Updates | | Sam09schulz
                      0
                    • vtmoz

                      Sub-domain with spammy content and links: Any impact on main website rankings?

                      Hi all, One of our sub-domains is forums. Our users will be discussing about our product and many related things. But some of the users in forum are adding a lot of spammy content everyday. I just wonder whether this scenario is ruining our ranking efforts of main website? A sub domain with spammy content really kills the ranking of main website? Thanks

                      Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz
                      0
                    • AppleSauceRules

                      Where can I find a breakdown of google search volume by specific industry/vertical? For example, what % of people searching in google are looking for housing? Cars? Restaurants?

                      I"m looking for specific breakdowns of search volume in google by: #1 Vertical (Shopping/restaurants/Services etc). For example, how many people are searching in google for information pertaining to restaurants per month? Search volume for all of 2012, 2013, 2014? #2 More granular categories within verticals, people searching for: books,apartment rentals,cellphones) Is there a breakdown of google search somewhere online that gives this type of information? Thank you MOZ community, really appreciate it!

                      Algorithm Updates | | AppleSauceRules
                      0
                    • SorinaDascalu

                      Is it possible that Google may have erroneous indexing dates?

                      I am consulting someone for a problem related to copied content. Both sites in question are WordPress (self hosted) sites. The "good" site publishes a post. The "bad" site copies the post (without even removing all internal links to the "good" site) a few days after. On both websites it is obvious the publishing date of the posts, and it is clear that the "bad" site publishes the posts days later. The content thief doesn't even bother to fake the publishing date. The owner of the "good" site wants to have all the proofs needed before acting against the content thief. So I suggested him to also check in Google the dates the various pages were indexed using Search Tools -> Custom Range in order to have the indexing date displayed next to the search results. For all of the copied pages the indexing dates also prove the "bad" site published the content days after the "good" site, but there are 2 exceptions for the very 2 first posts copied. First post:
                      On the "good" website it was published on 30 January 2013
                      On the "bad" website it was published on 26 February 2013
                      In Google search both show up indexed on 30 January 2013! Second post:
                      On the "good" website it was published on 20 March 2013
                      On the "bad" website it was published on 10 May 2013
                      In Google search both show up indexed on 20 March 2013! Is it possible to be an error in the date shown in Google search results? I also asked for help on Google Webmaster forums but there the discussion shifted to "who copied the content" and "file a DMCA complain". So I want to be sure my question is better understood here.
                      It is not about who published the content first or how to take down the copied content, I am just asking if anybody else noticed this strange thing with Google indexing dates. How is it possible for Google search results to display an indexing date previous to the date the article copy was published and exactly the same date that the original article was published and indexed?

                      Algorithm Updates | | SorinaDascalu
                      0
                    • EricMoore

                      How to get global search results on Google ? Also, is it possible to get results based on some other geographic location?

                      I don't want results based on my geographic location. When I am in India, I don't want local search results. In fact, I want results which are not dependent on my current location. Also, can I change my current location to some other city and will it affect the results ? For eg: While I am in London, can my search results be modified as if I am sitting in New York ?

                      Algorithm Updates | | EricMoore
                      0
                    • loopyal

                      Stop google indexing CDN pages

                      Just when I thought I'd seen it all, google hits me with another nasty surprise! I have a CDN to deliver images, js and css  to visitors around the world. I have no links to static HTML pages on the site, as far as I can tell, but someone else may have - perhaps a scraper site? Google has decided the static pages they were able to access through the CDN have more value than my real pages, and they seem to be slowly replacing my pages in the index with the static pages. Anyone got an idea on how to stop that? Obviously, I have no access to the static area, because it is in the CDN, so there is no way I know of that I can have a robots file there. It could be that I have to trash the CDN and change it to only allow the image directory, and maybe set up a separate CDN subdomain for content that only contains the JS and CSS? Have you seen this problem and beat it? (Of course the next thing is Roger might look at google results and start crawling them too, LOL) P.S. The reason I am not asking this question in the google forums is that others have asked this question many times and nobody at google has bothered to answer, over the past 5 months, and nobody who did try, gave an answer that was remotely useful. So I'm not really hopeful of anyone here having a solution either, but I expect this is my best bet because you guys are always willing to try.

                      Algorithm Updates | | loopyal
                      0
                    • DRTBA

                      Top 5 most optimized websites

                      Throwing this question out to the community but was wondering if anyone can direct me on how I can find the top 5 or 10 ten sites that have been most optimized for search engines. Meaning which web sites have the best reputation when it comes to website optimization for search engines or is there a resource where I can read about websites that have been ranked as the best when it comes to following best practices and have constantly ranked well within their industry? Figured it's always a good idea to learn from the best by looking at what they are doing. Thank you.

                      Algorithm Updates | | DRTBA
                      2
                    • d4online

                      Rankings changing every couple of MINUTES in Google?

                      We've been experiencing some unusual behaviour in the Google.co.uk SERPs recently... Basically, the ranking of some of our websites for certain keywords appears to be changing by the minute. For example, doing a search for "our keyword" might show us at #20. Then a few minutes later, doing the same search shows us at #14, and then the same search a few minutes later shows us at #26, and then sometimes we're not ranked at all, etc etc. I know the algorithm changes a lot, but does it really change every couple of minutes? Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour in the SERPs? What could be causing it to happen?

                      Algorithm Updates | | d4online
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.