Duplicate Content, Same Company?
-
Hello Moz Community,
I am doing work for a company and they have multiple locations.
For example, examplenewyork.com, examplesanfrancisco.com, etc.
They also have the same content on certain pages within each website.
For example, examplenewyork.com/page-a has the same content as examplesanfrancisco.com/page-a
Does this duplicate content negatively impact us? Or could we rank for each page within each location parameter (for example, people in new york search page-a would see our web page and people in san fran search page-a would see our web page)?
I hope this is clear.
Thanks,
Cole
-
Thanks all.
-
Sorry, I lost track of the fact that you were talking about dupe content on multiple domains, vs. on the same domain. The same logic basically applies. However, when you're talking about essentially duplicating entire domains registered to the same owner, there can be somewhat more of a risk that the original content gets discounted (or in such cases, penalized) along with the duplicate.
If you have a main site that seems to be doing OK in the search results, you may consider keeping that domain and it's content, while eliminating/redirecting the other domains and revising their content for use on the domain you're keeping.
-
Chris makes a fantastic point here.
You almost need to detach "what's reasonable" from what Google wants sometimes. Chris is right - why shouldn't those two pages have the same content? But we're dealing with algorithms mainly, not reasoning.
-
Cole,
I'm going to say roughly the same thing as the soon-to-be-guru Tom but give you somewhat of a different spin on it.
It's completely understandable that anyone with a website would feel that the the content applicable to one city would also apply to another city as well, so what's the harm in just switching out the city names? There shouldn't be really, and in most cases there is no actual harm, in it.
However, while Google's search engine makes it possible for customers in multiple cities to actually be able to seek out and find content you've "tailored" to them, it also makes it possible for other marketers to do the same as you've done--thus competition for keywords increases dramatically. On a small scale, google doesn't want to penalize, per se, a whole site for such practices, but it does want to differentiate that which might be original content from that which might be duplicates of the original and in doing so, be able to rank the original, while discounting duplicates.
To get around this "hurdle" you have to treat each of your pages as unique entities with unique values to each of your target markets. That way, content for each page ends up being unique and Google's algorithm can prioritize all the competitors' pages uniformly according to how relevant and valuable they are to the target audience.
-
Hey Cole
-
The more you do change, the less risk involved. Some might tell you that if you change the content enough to pass "copyscape" or other online plagiarism tools, that would protect you from a penalty. I find that to be slightly ridiculous - why would Google judge by those external standards? The more you can change, the better in my opinion (but I can totally sympathise with the work that entails)
-
Google will know you own the websites if you link them together, share GA code, host them together, contain the same company details and so on - but my question is why would you want to do that? I think if you tried to tell Google you owned all the sites they would come out you even harder, as they could see it as you being manipulative.
To that point, others will recommend that you only use one domain and target different KWs or locations on different pages/subfolders/subdomains, as it'll look less like a link network. Downside of that is getting Google local listings for each page/location can be a bit of a pain if the pages all come from one domain.
It's not really my place to comment on your strategy and what you should/should not be doing, but suffice to say if you go with individual domains for each location, you should aim to make those domains (and their copy) as unique and independent as possible.
-
-
Hey Tom,
The keywords we are competing for aren't very competitive.
Two follow up questions:
1.) To what length should we change the content? For example, is it a matter of a few words (location based) or is it more of altering each content on the page. I guess my question deals with the scope of the content change.
2.) Is there a way to let Google know we own all the websites? I had href lang in mind here. This may not be possible; I just wanted to ask.
Tom, thanks so much for your help.
Cole
-
Hi Cole
That kind of duplication will almost certainly negatively impact your ability to rank.
It's the kind of dupe content that Google hates - the kind that's deliberately manipulative and used by sites just trying to rank for as many different KWs or locations as possible, without trying to give people a unique user experience.
Not to say that you couldn't possibly rank like this (I've seen it happen and will probably see it again in the future), but you're leaving yourself wide open to a Panda penalty and, as such, I'd highly recommend that you cater each site and each landing page to your particular audience. Even by doing that, not only will you be making it unique but you would dramatically improve your chances of ranking by mentioning local things for a local page.
Give each page unique copy and really tailor it to your local audience.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Potential duplicate content issue?
We have a category on our website for PVC rolls to buy as standard 50m rolls (this includes 15 products in the category). We're also releasing PVC rolls to buy per metre (10m roll/25m roll etc...), again with 15 products, which we are adding as a separate category as it makes more sense for our customers and removes the risk of having too many options. Would using the same description be bad practice for SEO? The product is exactly the same just available in different roll sizes, but we definitely do not want to combine categories as it doesn't work for our customers. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | RayflexGroup0 -
Duplicate Page Titles
It seems as though we are being flagged for duplicate page titles when really they are slightly different. Is it better to remove the "dart board" or "dart board backboard" from all the product titles? We were doing this for optimal SEO - to rank for the search of "dart board" - but is it really hurting us? for example, our product titles are: Obama dart board backboard, Texas dart board backboard, Oklahoma dart board backboard, etc. Yet they are being flagged as duplicate titles.
On-Page Optimization | | DartsDecor0 -
Duplicate content issues - page content and store URLs
Hi, I'm experiencing some heavy duplicate content Crawl errors on Moz with www.redrockdecals.com and therefore I really need some help. It brings up different connections between products and I'm having a hard time figuring out what it means. It is listing the same products as duplicate content but they have different URL endings. For example:http://www.redrockdecals.com/car-graphics/chevrolet-silverado?___store=nl&___from_store=us
On-Page Optimization | | speedbird1229
&
http://www.redrockdecals.com/car-graphics/chevrolet-silverado?___store=d&___from_store=us It seems like Moz considers the copy-pasted parts in the Full Description (scrolled a bit down on product pages) as Duplicate Content. For example the general text found on this page: http://www.redrockdecals.com/caution-tow-limited-turning-radius-decal Or this page: http://www.redrockdecals.com/if-you-don-t-succeed-first-time-then-skydiving-isn-t-for-you-bumper-sticker I am planning to write new and unique descriptions for all products but what do you suggest - should I either remove the long same descriptions or just shorten them perhaps so they don't outweigh the short but unique descriptions above? I've heard search engines understand that some parts of the page can be same on other pages but I wonder if in my case this has gone too deep... Thanks so much!0 -
Duplicate content affects on overall rankings
Hi guys, I have a website that has 23 pages with duplicate content. These pages serve the same function, which enables customers to upload their images. There is not much content on each one but we require a different page for each of our products, here is an example page: http://www.point101.com/giclee_printing/upload#/upload I don't think it makes sense to use a canonical tag as each page is for a different product and I think its going to be difficult to differentiate each page. I was wondering: 1. If this has a negative effect on the ranking of our homepage and other main product pages or if its an issue we do not need to worry too much about. 2. If anyone has any other ideas as to how we can resolve this issue. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | KerryK
Kerry0 -
Duplicate Content Issue in Magento
Hi I need help in resolving the duplicate content issue on my magento site I got a product My main product url is https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/shop-by-product/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest and it got variation of url see below that are causing duplicate content issue , I have inserted the canonical tag on the below url and my main url is https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/shop-by-product/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest but still moz is showing it as duplicate content. Help Please <colgroup><col width="1003"></colgroup>
On-Page Optimization | | Adnan.Hassan.Khan
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/product/oak-bedroom-furniture/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/6/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/17/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/shop-by-range/boston/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/42/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/63/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/67/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/46/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/79/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/88/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/75/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/90/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/92/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/33/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/27/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/shop-by-range/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/50/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/22/ |
| https://www.oakfurnitureking.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/45/s/boston-solid-oak-4-drawer-chest/category/74/ |0 -
Does Google still see masked domains as duplicate content?
Older reads state the domain forwarding or masking will create duplicate content but Google has evolved quite a bit and I'm wondering if that is still the case? Not suggesting that a 301 is not the proper way to redirect something but my question is: Does Google still see masked domains as duplicate content? Is there any viable use for domain masking other than for affiliates?
On-Page Optimization | | TracyWeb0 -
Cross Domain Duplicate Content
Hi My client has a series of websies, one main website and several mini websites, articles are created and published daily and weekly, one will go on a the main website and the others on one, two, or three of the mini sites. To combat duplication, i only ever allow one article to be indexed (apply noindex to articles that i don't wanted indexed by google, so, if 3 sites have same article, 2 sites will have noindex tag added to head). I am not completely sure if this is ok, and whether there are any negative affects, apart from the articles tagged as noindex not being indexed. Are there any obvious issues? I am aware of the canonical link rel tag, and know that this can be used on the same domain, but can it be used cross domain, in place of the noindex tag? If so, is it exactly the same in structure as the 'same domain' canonical link rel tag? Thanks Matt
On-Page Optimization | | mattys0 -
Is the www and non www isue realy seen by Google as duplicate content?
I realy don't understand how Google could posibly devaluate a link because the site displays the same content with www and without www. I mean did somebody recently saw a devaluation of a domain because of this isue? I somehow can not belive this because it is the standard when geting a new webspace that the new website display the same content with and without www. Is a redirect realy necessary?
On-Page Optimization | | MichaelJanik0