undefined
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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Duplicate content on recruitment website

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.

Duplicate content on recruitment website

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
4
5
2.4k
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.
  • iQi
    iQi last edited by Oct 15, 2015, 9:14 AM

    Hi everyone,

    It seems that Panda 4.2 has hit some industries more than others. I just started working on a website, that has no manual action, but the organic traffic has dropped massively in the last few months. Their external linking profile seems to be fine, but I suspect usability issues, especially the duplication may be the reason.

    The website is a recruitment website in a specific industry only. However, they posts jobs for their clients, that can be very similar, and in the same time they can have 20 jobs with the same title and very similar job descriptions. The website currently have over 200 pages with potential duplicate content.

    Additionally, these jobs get posted on job portals, with the same content (Happens automatically through a feed).

    The questions here are:

    1. How bad would this be for the website usability, and would it be the reason the traffic went down?
    2. Is this the affect of Panda 4.2 that is still rolling
    3. What can be done to resolve these issues?

    Thank you in advance.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • KristinaKledzik
      KristinaKledzik last edited by Oct 16, 2015, 5:57 PM Oct 16, 2015, 5:57 PM

      Hi Issa,

      You're right, duplicate content and bad usability could be triggering the slow rolling Panda 4.2, but I'd dig in a little more (apologies if you already did this research):

      • You mentioned 200 pages are potentially duplicate; how many are on the site in total? If you have thousands of pages indexed, 200 duplicates probably aren't going to cause a Panda penalty.

      • How similar are these postings? Just the page title? Or is the entire page extremely similar in content? (To answer this: if you made a keyword cloud for these similar job descriptions, would they show roughly the same mapping?)

      • If it's just the page title that's similar, make sure to set the pages apart by including the name of the hiring company (which I assume makes the different positions unique) towards the beginning of the page title

      • If the entire page is similar, then add more content to make the pages more unique, like a blurb about the hiring company, how long the job has been up, how many applicants the job has (if available), etc.

      • Either way, make sure you don't have any old jobs that still have live pages! If possible, I'd redirect them to a similar job posting.

      • Like John asked, did your traffic drop dramatically one day, or has it been tapering off? If it's tapering off, I'd guess it's not Panda.

      • And, last, which pages lost traffic and rankings? Which keywords dropped in rankings? You may be able to tell how you were penalized by which keywords were most affected.

      Hope this helps,

      Kristina

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • dohertyjf
        dohertyjf last edited by May 12, 2016, 3:10 PM Oct 15, 2015, 10:19 PM

        Hi Issa -

        Great question here. Seems your client is potentially in a tough spot with this!

        There is a ton to unpack here and it is hard to know specifics without the site (feel free to private message it to me), but to your specific questions:

        • Re: if it is a problem that the jobs have the same title, that is only something you can answer with the analytics data you have access to. It usually is not a problem, but when you have this sort of situation I'd also ask if you have category pages for those terms (eg 20 Growth Hacker jobs in SF a day, but also a "Growth Hacker Jobs in SF" category where all those individual jobs link back up to
        • Regarding syndication of content, this can cause an issue if not done correctly. You'd have to see where they lost traffic (you hopefully already know), but if it's the case with syndicated listings losing traffic and non-syndicated not, this is an issue. What I've often done is either get the site we are syndicating to to implement a canonical back to my listing, or get a followed link from their version back to yours. Also, you can be selective about what you syndicate so that it's a small duplication vs complete. Also, make your pages more robust and only syndicate the necessary info if possible.
        • Website usability can be bad for Panda, especially if bounce rates are really high. Check those and see if they are high. If they are, you should fix it anyways because you'll get better conversions. I've also heard of cases where they made their site "stickier" and they bounced back from Panda.

        I guess it's hard to know if Panda is still rolling out, but from everything  I have heard it is. I assume this was not just a one-time drop on one day, but rather a slow leak of traffic? That makes it harder to investigate if the second.

        Good luck!

        John

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • iQi
          iQi @TimHolmes last edited by Oct 15, 2015, 9:58 AM Oct 15, 2015, 9:58 AM

          Great thank you.

          Will have a read.

          Still though, with the situation above, is it OK for this industry to have such duplicate content and what to do about it if its not.

          Thanks

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TimHolmes
            TimHolmes last edited by Oct 15, 2015, 9:54 AM Oct 15, 2015, 9:54 AM

            I was reading an article earlier from SEO RoundTable, where it details that Duplicate content is a side issue and not necessarily related to the Panda Update - read more here - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-duplicate-content-panda-issues-different-21039.html

            John Mueller stated that sites with low quality content are hit by Panda and that duplicate content is a separate side issue.

            iQi 1 Reply Last reply Oct 15, 2015, 9:58 AM Reply Quote 2
            • 1 / 1
            1 out of 5
            • First post
              1/5
              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

            • nchlondon

              Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?

              Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website. The problem is its a directory page to different locations. E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations: www.sitename.com/locations/london www.sitename.com/locations/rome www.sitename.com/locations/germany The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content. Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page? I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map. Help would be appreciated. Thanks.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 30, 2016, 8:16 AM | nchlondon
              0
            • marcandre

              Woocommerce SEO & Duplicate content?

              Hi Moz fellows, I'm new to Woocommerce and couldn't find help on Google about certain SEO-related things. All my past projects were simple 5 pages websites + a blog, so I would just no-index categories, tags and archives to eliminate duplicate content errors. But with Woocommerce Product categories and tags, I've noticed that many e-Commerce websites with a high domain authority actually rank for certain keywords just by having their category/tags indexed. For example keyword 'hippie clothes' = etsy.com/category/hippie-clothes (fictional example) The problem is that if I have 100 products and 10 categories & tags on my site it creates THOUSANDS of duplicate content errors, but If I 'non index' categories and tags they will never rank well once my domain authority rises... Anyone has experience/comments about this? I use SEO by Yoast plugin. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance. -Marc

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 5, 2016, 3:32 PM | marcandre
              1
            • EasyLounge

              [E-commerce] Duplicate content due to color variations (canonical/indexing)

              Hello, We currently have a lot of color variations on multiple products with almost the same content. Even with our canonicals being set, Moz's crawling tool seems to flag them as duplicate content. What we have done so far: Choosing the best-selling color variation (our "master product") Adding a rel="canonical" to every variation (with our "master product" as the canonical URL) In my opinion, it should be enough to address this issue. However, being given the fact that it's flagged as duplicate by Moz, I was wondering if there is something else we should do? Should we add a "noindex,follow" to our child products and "index,follow" to our master product? (sounds to me like such a heavy change) Thank you in advance

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 15, 2014, 4:53 AM | EasyLounge
              0
            • Roy1973

              Ecommerce Duplicate Product Descriptions across 3 websites

              Hi, We are an e commerce company that has our own domain but also sell the same products on eBay and Amazon. What is the feeling on the same exact descriptions being used on different platforms? Do they count as duplicate content? Will our domain be punished/penalised as our domain does not have as much authority as EBay or Amazon? We have over 5,000 products with our own hand written product descriptions. We want our website to be the main place/ have priority over the above market places. What's the best suggestion/solution? thanks,

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 10, 2013, 8:22 AM | Roy1973
              0
            • HiteshBharucha

              Duplicate content on subdomains.

              Hi Mozer's, I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com. So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication. Many Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 12, 2016, 11:33 PM | HiteshBharucha
              0
            • knielsen

              Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?

              I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 22, 2012, 7:20 AM | knielsen
              0
            • irvingw

              Is SEOmoz.org creating duplicate content with their CDN subdomain?

              Example URL: http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions Canonical is a RELATIVE link, should be an absolute link pointing to main domain: http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions <link href='[/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions)' rel='<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>' /> 13,400 pages indexed in Google under cdn subdomain go to google   >  site:http://cdn.seomoz.org https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&oq=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&gs_l=hp.2...986.6227.0.6258.28.14.0.0.0.5.344.3526.2-10j2.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.Uprw7ko7jnU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=97577626a0fb6a97&biw=1920&bih=936

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 27, 2012, 6:36 PM | irvingw
              1
            • gregelwell

              Could you use a robots.txt file to disalow a duplicate content page from being crawled?

              A website has duplicate content pages to make it easier for users to find the information from a couple spots in the site navigation. Site owner would like to keep it this way without hurting SEO. I've thought of using the robots.txt file to disallow search engines from crawling one of the pages. Would you think this is a workable/acceptable solution?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 4, 2012, 9:15 PM | gregelwell
              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.