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.
Handling of Duplicate Content
-
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.
-
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!
-
Nice idea - I have already started this. I just now have to include it for each listing. Thanks!!
-
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
-
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
-
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
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
-
Duplicate Content Issues with Pagination
Hi Moz Community, We're an eCommerce site so we have a lot of pagination issues but we were able to fix them using the rel=next and rel=prev tags. However, our pages have an option to view 60 items or 180 items at a time. This is now causing duplicate content problems when for example page 2 of the 180 item view is the same as page 4 of the 60 item view. (URL examples below) Wondering if we should just add a canonical tag going to the the main view all page to every page in the paginated series to get ride of this issue. https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=180&p=2 https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=60&p=4 Thoughts, ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
How do I handle duplicate content of the same product in Multiple product categories?
I am building a BigCommerce store for selling framed art. Many of the pieces of art will fall in more than one product category. Let's say I have a framed print of a photograph of a western landscape. This piece of art would fit into these categories; "western", "landscape", and "photography". I would have three pages with duplicate content for just this one framed print. Will google give me less page rank due to this? Can all the link juice be given to just one of the three categories by use of rel=canonical? If so, does anyone know how to do this for a bigcommerce site? I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks, Kelly
Technical SEO | | Kelly_S0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a ton of duplicate content/title errors on our reports, many of them showing errors of: http://www.mysite.com/(page title) and http://mysite.com/(page title) Our site has been set up so that mysite.com 301 redirects to www.mysite.com (we did this a couple years ago). Is it possible that I set up my campaign the wrong way in SEOMoz? I'm thinking it must be a user error when I set up the campaign since we already have the 301 Redirect. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
Localized domains and duplicate content
Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice
Technical SEO | | fabrizzio0 -
Duplicate Content and URL Capitalization
I have multiple URLs that SEOMoz is reporting as duplicate content. The reason is that there are characters in the URL that may, or may not, be capitalized depending on user input. A couple examples are: www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-rent www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-rent There are currently thousands of instances of this on the site. Is this something I should spend effort to try and resolve (may not be minor effort), or should I just ignore it and move on?
Technical SEO | | Jom0 -
How much to change to avoid duplicate content?
Working on a site for a dentist. They have a long list of services that they want us to flesh out with text. They provided a bullet list of services, we're trying to get 1 to 2 paragraphs of text for each. Obviously, we're not going to write this off the top of our heads. We're pulling text from other sources and trying to rework. The question is, how much rephrasing do we have to do to avoid a duplicate content penalty? Do we make sure there are changes per paragraph, sentence, or phrase? Thanks! Eric
Technical SEO | | ericmccarty0 -
Are recipes excluded from duplicate content?
Does anyone know how recipes are treated by search engines? For example, I know press releases are expected to have lots of duplicates out there so they aren't penalized. Does anyone know if recipes are treated the same way. For example, if you Google "three cheese beef pasta shells" you get the first two results with identical content.
Technical SEO | | RiseSEO0 -
Duplicate Content issue
I have been asked to review an old website to an identify opportunities for increasing search engine traffic. Whilst reviewing the site I came across a strange loop. On each page there is a link to printer friendly version: http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes That page also has a link to a printer friendly version http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes&printfriendly=yes and so on and so on....... Some of these pages are being included in Google's index. I appreciate that this can't be a good thing, however, I am not 100% sure as to the extent to which it is a bad thing and the priority that should be given to getting it sorted. Just wandering what views people have on the issues this may cause?
Technical SEO | | CPLDistribution0