Handling of Duplicate Content

[TIM_DOTCOM]

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.

[MoosaHemani]

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!

[TIM_DOTCOM]

Nice idea - I have already started this. I just now have to include it for each listing. Thanks!!

[DirkC]

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

[TIM_DOTCOM]

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

[DirkC]

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