How does Google handle duplicate content?



How does Google handle duplicate content and what negative effects can it have on rankings from an SEO perspective?
Gary Taylor, Stratford Upon Avon, UK

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43 thoughts on “How does Google handle duplicate content?”

  1. What if I have two websites, selling the same products, having the same backend and design but different SEO metas & content? Will it affect my website. Have seen a hit after the August update.

  2. Her brother
    My content writer has written a duplicate content on my website and when my website ranking on the first page some complaints to DMCA and now i am remove from the search results what should I do now it will effect on my ranking please reply

  3. Matt, we have a web site Filled with 1,900 products and are just starting to load the same products to Etsy and wondering if we need to create all NEW copy or edit current copy so it is not duplicate copy. We do not want to hurt our SEO by having the exact same product descriptions in both areas for a product. Thanks for your help and time. And LOVE watching your videos. Myra

  4. I have a competitor with about 100 suburbs with each suburb name as the main H1 heading tag & then the rest of the content is identical to every single page & they are ranking at the top of all of these suburbs is this O.K or is there anyway to report this site

    Thanks

  5. Hi, is it ok to duplicate the code for page design then? E.g. if we need lots of pages that will differ in the actual videos/writing, but could use the same overall layout, is that ok?

  6. I've got a website that has been mirrored by somebody, and they somewhat managed to took our place in several SERP : with the same title, meta and content, at about the same position, but their domain.tld

    How could that possibly happen ? Our website has been online for almost 5 years, has a fair number of high quality and 100% organic links (mostly from online magazines and blogs), and yet in a week or two someone else could take our content and our trafic, even on keyword containing our BRAND !

    Their site is now down, but we have had a cut of ~90% of our homepage trafic, and Google still shows and links to the false site… I have reported that this site has deleted its content, but I have no idea how to retrieve the fair position we took time and work to achieve.

  7. What would happen if I uploaded the same video every day? But changed a millisecond or added a frame each time so it wasn't completely duplicated. Would that be allowed on YouTube? Just out of curiosity. 😛

  8. I have referral forms for each city in Canada. The forms are similar, but there is localized content. My users prefer to look up and use the form for their own town, makes them happier. So is this duplicate content? I feel it is necessary to keep my users coming back

  9. Well stated! very true. By the way I am a video marketer,and I utilize youtube to get web traffic, and this particular video is very helpful for me. thanks! you can visit my youtube channel and learn more information about how i operate for the benefit of my web business (how to get unlimited traffic, boost sales, channel popularity and much more…)

  10. Matt Cutts states that about 25-30% of content on the net is duplicate content. He goes on to say that duplicate content does happen and that not all duplicate content is spam. Google looks for duplicate content and then tries to group is together and treat it as one piece of content. So when Google comes across two identical pages Google may decide to show just one of the pages on search results. Not all duplicate content is spam – it just needs to be clustered appropriately. Duplicate content does happen. But if all you do is duplicate content and you are doing it in an abusive, deceptive, malicious or manipulative way than expect Google to take action and treat your content as spam.
    Matt suggests that it is important that you add value to your content.

  11. When Google+ taking over youtube….users are allow to make multiple accounts…and they can rename it to anything they want….even the same names that already existed on youtube…for example, I was able to make another account named "Google Webmasters"….so anyone can impersonate someone else on youtube…and I bet it's going to be the popular channels…..how are going to tackle that issue??

  12. for example all classified sites goes with CMS.  and visitor can put their adverts.  so visitor can put their advert on serveral classified sites same content.  their object is sell their property as soon as possible. in this case . lot of duplicates on several classified sites . any idea?

    #webdesign   #webdevelopment   #seotips   #kawdoco  

  13. How can I make a website about for ex. quotes or song lyrics and have unique content? Should I write my philosophical opinions about the song lyrics in order just to create some unique content?

  14. Interesante que el 20 por cien de la mayoría de los sitios es contenido duplicado. La gente suele confundir contenido duplicado con contenido copiado de otra web y la diferencia es abismal.

  15. Interesting… He mentions that this is a question they get a lot so it was worth answering, yet before that he says "ohh" as if he is it is the first time he read the question ha.

  16. Can anyone clarify what happens in the following situation.

    Let's for arguments sake say I have a job board and I have a job advertised on there and another website aggregates that content – let's say Indeed.com. Now does Indeed get the credit for the original content or do I because clearly they're the higher authority on Jobs in general but they do NOT own the original content that they scraped from my website.

    This has always plagued me – can anyone shed some light?

  17. Hey Matt,
    What if I am selling the same content to multiple clients in different localities? The content would appear on different URLS owned by different businesses. Wourld my clients be penalized?
    Joyce

  18. What is perceived to be duplicate content, as you often have products which are different to each other by a variable amount, but from a selling point of view you wish to duplicate elements of the description across the range of products?

  19. Duplicate content… And more often than not, STOLEN content, Google!
    My biggest problem with you is that you will index STOLEN content before genuine content. Google hand in hand with online thieves.

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