Questions about duplicate photo content?
-
I know that Google is a mystery, so I am not sure if there are answers to these questions, but I'm going to ask anyway! I recently realized that Google is not happy with duplicate photo content. I'm a photographer and have sold many photos in the past (but retained the rights for) that I am now using on my site. My recent revelations means that I'm now taking down all of these photos. So I've been reverse image searching all of my photos to see if I let anyone else use it first, and in the course of this I found out that there are many of my photos being used by other sites on the web. So my questions are:
With photos that I used first and others have stolen, If I edit these photos (to add copyright info) and then re-upload them, will the sites that are using these images then get credit for using the original image first?
If I have a photo on another one of my own sites and I take it down, can I safely use that photo on my main site, or will Google retain the knowledge that it's been used somewhere else first?
If I sold a photo and it's being used on another site, can I safely use a different photo from the same series that is almost exactly the same? I am unclear what data from the photo Google is matching, and if they can tell the difference between photos that were taken a few seconds apart.
-
I do now see where he did also claim visa versa that using originals wont help either.
why would matt or rand mention it? they don't work for google they will not know everything.
But he also said to the best of his knowledge, at that time, and that in the future that may change and it was 2 years ago. So I would still try to get original images if you can.
-
I don't know where you get the idea that Google is not happy with duplicate photo content but there no such thing as that. If there is, Matt or Rand should have already mentioned it. But there is none, and at the very least I already provided you an evidence to support my claim. Would you rather rely on other presumptions?
FYI, even duplicate content has its own stand on Google. You see, contents and photos are meant to be shared, so as long as you're not doing spammy things on the web, Google has no reason to punish you. Cheer up!
-
But that video is two years old and he says that using duplicate photo content is a good idea for a future quality signal. So I'm not sure that it's still relevant. But I guess we can't prove it one way or the other!
-
But they may reward you for unique images.
-
I think you might want to read this: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2013/07/29/google-we-dont-penalize-duplicate-images/.
-
Why do you think Google doesn't penalize for duplicate photo content? It seems like it would be a great way to find scrapers and those with low-value content.
-
Hi Lina,
I understand your trouble Lina but worry not because Google doesn't penalize duplicate photo content. On the other hand, you can optimize so it can be found easily by adding short but concise meta tag title and meta description.
You don't need to edit the Photos, but you're free to add copyright info. However, I don't think it is necessary for the photos you sold.
It is also not necessary to take down existing photos from one of your sites. But if it were me, I would add a referral link (stating that they can access more photos: or original version of:) to your main site. Not only your audience will take notice of your main site but it will also improve your main site's ranking in search results.
True, Google can tell the difference between photos that were taken a few seconds apart, but there is no reason it should be a big issue. Photos were meant to be shared from the start.
Uhmm I'm getting the image of you wanting to gather audience for your main site immediately. Regarding this, you might try Google Adwords for getting audience faster.
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
-
Duplicate content across similar computer "models" and how to properly handle it.
I run a website that revolves around a niche rugged computer market. There are several "main" models for each computer that also has several (300-400) "sub" models that only vary by specifications for each model. My problem is I can't really consolidate each model to one product page to avoid duplicate content. To have something like a drop down list would be massive and confusing to the customer when they could just search the model they needed. Also I would say 80-90% of the market searches for a specific model when they go to purchase or in Google. A lot of our customers are city government, fire departments, police departments etc. they get a list of approved models and purchase off that they don't really search by specs or "configure" a model so each model number having a chance to rank is important. Currently we have all models in each sub category rel=canonical back to the main category page for that model. Is there a better way to go about this? Example page you can see how there are several models all product descriptions are the same they only vary by model writing a unique description for each one is an unrealistic possibility for us. Any suggestions on this would be appreciated I keep going back on forth on what the correct solution would be.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | The_Rugged_Store0 -
Duplicate content created by website Calendar - A Penalty?
A colleague of mine asked me a question about duplicate content coming from their event calendar. I don't think this will affect them negatively, but I would love some feedback and thoughts. ThanksOne of my clients, LifeTech Academy, is using my RavenTools software. Raventools has reported a HUGE amount of duplicate content (4.4K instances).The duplicate content all revolves around their calendar and repeating events (http://lifetechacademy.org/events/)The question is this - will this impact their SEO efforts in a negative way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bill_K0 -
Could this be seen as duplicate content in Google's eyes?
Hi I'm an in-house SEO and we've recently seen Panda related traffic loss along with some of our main keywords slipping down the SERPs. Looking for possible Panda related issues I was wondering if the following could be seen as duplicate content. We've got some very similar holidays (travel company) on our website. While they are different I'm concerned it may be seen as creating content that is too similar: http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/the-wildlife-and-beaches-of-kenya.aspx http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/ultimate-kenya-wildlife-and-beaches.aspx http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/wildlife-and-beach-family-safari.aspx They do all have unique text but as you can see from the titles, they are very similar (note from an SEO point of view the tabbed content is all within the same page at source level). At the top level of the holiday pages we have a filtered search:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays.aspx These pages have a unique introduction but the content snippets being pulled into the boxes is drawn from each of the individual holiday pages. I'm just concerned that these could be introducing some duplicating issues. Any thoughts?0 -
Site been plagiarised - duplicate content
Hi, I look after two websites, one sells commercial mortgages the other sells residential mortgages. We recently redesigned both sites, and one was moved to a new domain name as we rebranded it from being a trading style of the other brand to being a brand in its own right. I have recently discovered that one of my most important pages on the residential mortgages site is not in Google's index. I did a bit of poking around with Copyscape and found another broker has copied our page almost word-for-word. I then used copyscape to find all the other instances of plagiarism on the other broker's site and there are a few! It now looks like they have copied pages from our commercial mortgages site as well. I think the reason our page has been removed from the index is that we relaunced both these sites with new navigation and consequently new urls. Can anyone back me up on this theory? I am 100% sure that our page is the original version because we write everything in-house and I check it with copyscape before it gets published, Also the fact that this other broker has copied from several different sites corroborates this view. Our legal team has written two letters (not sent yet) - one to the broker and the other to the broker's web designer. These letters ask the recipient to remove the copied content within 14 days. If they do remove our content from our site, how do I get Google to reindex our pages, given that Google thinks OUR pages are the copied ones and not the other way around? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or, will it just happen automatically? I have no experience of this scenario! In the past, where I've found duplicate content like this, I've just rewritten the page, and chalked it up to experience but I don't really want to in this case because, frankly, the copy on these pages is really good! And, I don't think it's fair that someone else could potentially be getting customers that were persuaded by OUR copy. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Best strategy for duplicate content?
Hi everyone, We have a site where all product pages have more or less similar text (same printing techniques, etc.) The main differences are prices and images, text is highly similar. We have around 150 products in every language. Moz's algorithm tells me to do something about duplicate content, but I don't really know what we could do, since the descriptions can't be changed to be very different. We essentially have paper bags in different colors and and from different materials.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaanMSonberg0 -
404 for duplicate content?
Sorry, I think this is my third question today... But I have a lot of duplicated content on my site. I use joomla so theres a lot of unintentional duplication. For example, www.mysite.com/index.php exists, etc. Up till now, I thought I had to 301 redirect or rel=canonical these "duplicated pages." However, can I just 404 it? Is there anything wrong with this rpactice in regards to SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waltergah0 -
Duplicate Content on Press Release?
Hi, We recently held a charity night in store. And had a few local celebs turn up etc... We created a press release to send out to various media outlets, within the press release were hyperlinks to our site and links on certain keywords to specific brands on our site. My question is, should we be sending a different press release to each outlet to stop the duplicate content thing, or is sending the same release out to everyone ok? We will be sending approx 20 of these out, some going online and some not. So far had one local paper website, a massive football website and a local magazine site. All pretty much same content and a few pics. Any help, hints or tips on how to go about this if I am going to be sending out to a load of other sites/blogs? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Duplicate content - canonical vs link to original and Flash duplication
Here's the situation for the website in question: The company produces printed publications which go online as a page turning Flash version, and as a separate HTML version. To complicate matters, some of the articles from the publications get added to a separate news section of the website. We want to promote the news section of the site over the publications section. If we were to forget the Flash version completely, would you: a) add a canonical in the publication version pointing to the version in the news section? b) add a link in the footer of the publication version pointing to the version in the news section? c) both of the above? d) something else? What if we add the Flash version into the mix? As Flash still isn't as crawlable as HTML should we noindex them? Is HTML content duplicated in Flash as big an issue as HTML to HTML duplication?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0