Google consolidating link juice on duplicate content pages
-
I've observed some strange findings on a website I am diagnosing and it has led me to a possible theory that seems to fly in the face of a lot of thinking:
My theory is:
When google see's several duplicate content pages on a website, and decides to just show one version of the page, it at the same time agrigates the link juice pointing to all the duplicate pages, and ranks the 1 duplicate content page it decides to show as if all the link juice pointing to the duplicate versions were pointing to the 1 version.EG
Link X -> Duplicate Page A
Link Y -> Duplicate Page BGoogle decides Duplicate Page A is the one that is most important and applies the following formula to decide its rank.
Link X + Link Y (Minus some dampening factor) -> Page A
I came up with the idea after I seem to have reverse engineered this - IE the website I was trying to sort out for a client had this duplicate content, issue, so we decided to put unique content on Page A and Page B (not just one page like this but many). Bizarrely after about a week, all the Page A's dropped in rankings - indicating a possibility that the old link consolidation, may have been re-correctly associated with the two pages, so now Page A would only be getting Link Value X.
Has anyone got any test/analysis to support or refute this??
-
I have observed some strange switches between home page and landing page on our site which kind of goes towards your theory. However I am not convinced that Google consolidates PageRank in any other way then simply by following links and mathematically assigning it throughout the site. All duplicate pages flow PageRank and pass it to the rest of the site in the same way they receive it. Sometimes Google will block a page which is seen as duplicate. That page will not show or pass any PageRank or anchor text value to other pages (dead end).
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
-
Link externally from destination pages
Hello, From my destinations pages, is it beneficial to have a link going externally to the hotels my clients are staying in ? In other words is it beneficial to my website or will it hurt me to link external from all my destinations pages to all the hotels my clients are staying in ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
How does google treat dynamically generated content on a page?
I'm trying to find information on how google treats dynamically generated content within a webpage? (not dynamic urls) For example I have a list of our top 10 products with short product descriptions and links on our homepage to flow some of the pagerank to those individual product pages. My developer wants to make these top products dynamic to where they switch around daily. Won't this negatively affect my seo and ability to rank for those keywords if they keep switching around or would this help since the content would be updated so frequently?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntsupply0 -
HELP! How do I get Google to value one page over another (older) page that is ranking?
So I have a tactical question and I need mozzers. I'll use widgets as an example: 1- My company used to sell widgets exclusively and we built thousands of useful, branded unique pages that sell widgets. We have thousands of pages that are ranking for widgets.com/brand-widgets-for-sale. (These pages have been live for almost 2 years) 2- We've shifted our focus to now renting widgets. We have about 100 pages focused on renting the same branded widgets. These pages have unique content and photos and can be found at widgets.com/brand-widgets-for-rent. (These pages have been live for about 2-3 months) The problem is that when someone searches just for the brand name, the "for sale" pages dramatically outrank the "for rent" pages. Instead, I want them to find the "for rent" page. I don't want to redirect traffic from the "for sale" pages because someone might still be interested in buying (although as a company, we are super focused on renting). Solutions? "nofollow" the "for sale" pages with the idea that Google will stop indexing "for sale" and start valuing "for rent" over it? Remove "for sale" from sitemap. Help!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vacatia_SEO0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content (with and without www)
How can we resolve pages with duplicate page content? With and without www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
Thanks in advance.0 -
Do banners pass link juice
Hello there, If we place an animated gif banner on a website will this pass link juice in the same way as if we just had a link? Obviously the website would need to be "Follow" Thanks Robert
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Big discrepancies between pages in Google's index and pages in sitemap
Hi, I'm noticing a huge difference in the number of pages in Googles index (using 'site:' search) versus the number of pages indexed by Google in Webmaster tools. (ie 20,600 in 'site:' search vs 5,100 submitted via the dynamic sitemap.) Anyone know possible causes for this and how i can fix? It's an ecommerce site but i can't see any issues with duplicate content - they employ a very good canonical tag strategy. Could it be that Google has decided to ignore the canonical tag? Any help appreciated, Karen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digirank0 -
Duplicate Content Question
We are getting ready to release an integration with another product for our app. We would like to add a landing page specifically for this integration. We would also like it to be very similar to our current home page. However, if we do this and use a lot of the same content, will this hurt our SEO due to duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NathanGilmore0 -
How to manage duplicate content?
I have a real estate site that contains a large amount of duplicate content. The site contains listings that appear both on my clients website and on my competitors websites(who have better domain authority). It is critical that the content is there because buyers need to be able to find these listings to make enquiries. The result is that I have a large number pages that contain duplicate content in some way, shape or form. My search results pages are really the most important ones because these are the ones targeting my keywords. I can differentiate these to some degree but the actual listings themselves are duplicate. What strategies exist to ensure that I'm not suffereing as a result of this content? Should I : Make the duplicate content noindex. Yes my results pages will have some degree of duplicate content but each result only displays a 200 character summary of the advert text so not sure if that counts. Would reducing the amount of visible duplicate content improve my rankings as a whole? Link back to the clients site to indicate that they are the original source Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0