How does required duplicate content (terms and conditions, etc.) affect search?



How does duplicate copy that’s legally required (ie Terms & Conditions across multiple offers) affect performance in search?
Jason, New York

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27 thoughts on “How does required duplicate content (terms and conditions, etc.) affect search?”

  1. hi there,
    I have something on my mind which has been bothering me for a while.
    Will it create a problem for my website if I copy another website's terms and conditions/ privacy policy on mine ????

  2. Hello thank you for this explanation, I have a concern I hope you could address it.
    I want to make all of my websites WCAG compliant, I'm thinking (not sure if it is the correct way of doing it), of duplicating all contents without images, Google ads, but I do want to leave my business ads to promote my banner sales thinking that people with hearing or visual impairment could be interested in having their business listed. Will I be penalized for doing so? PLEASE HELP!
    Thank you
    Semper Fi

  3. Still a lot of sites with high page rank are copying content and dont get a penalty for that, furthermore their page ranks higher than the normal guy who has the original.

  4. Two things you can and should do:

    1. Connect and establish Google Authorship. This will verify your content as unique and in the future, derank duplicate content. This is the main way google can verify your content as unique.

    2. Issue a DMCA takedown notice.

  5. Sorry to hear that. You can always send them a copyright issue and ask them to take the copied content down or else wait for the next update. Wishing you good luck.

  6. I can assure you there's nothing botted about my comments. No bot can watch a video and talk about it with any meaning. I think the reviews on my Fiverr gigs speak for themselves. Thousands of positive happy customers!

  7. Spook – What if it is an eCommerce site where there is very little unique content on a product page (30-50 words on the product) but it has 100 words on "free return" "14 days money back guarantee" "disclaimer" etc.? Would you consider it a problem?

  8. You could do a image but they can still read it and rewrite it, I say if you want content not copied make them pay for it if you already arnt or better yet make a video place it in vimeo and keep it unlisted that way people cant search it or share a link they can only see it via your original link 🙂

    They could still copy what you say in the video but most people are too lazy to stop go stop go on a video.

    hope this helps!

  9. Even the content kept secret in the membership area, there may be bad member sharing premium stuff, i am really frustrated by these facts: Illegal Copy and Content stolen.

    What i can do to protect my work is writing the very own post, that is just to say about myself (extremely authority) and make text into image format to prevent copying.

    Some ways better?

  10. You really cant help that, for it is the world wide web, Unless you make it private you cant do anything about it or you put a watermark in there somewhere but that still wont help they can just rewrite it.

    Its hard to share things and not get it copied

  11. His statements, as usual are vague. He does not want to commit to anything. Just uses "probably", "might". My dear Matt, hundreds of thousands genuine businesses (many more families) have been badly affected by Panda updates, including mine.

  12. I am really angry that Other people copied my content ( for SEO or earning from PPC model ads) but their result is higher than my ogritional and unique work. The panda update should remove all the copied links to make it fair for those who is trying best to provide quality content.

  13. What about a 'cars for sale' website for example. Most car sales people or private sellers will post the same content about the car for sale on multiple sites. Should those pages be 'noindexed' or are they safe as long as they are no spammy???? Confused!

  14. Good to know but TOS pages aren't trying to rank for any keywords. Wish Panda would give more leeway for unintentional duplicates that are trying to ranking for specific keywords. Luckily we have URL parameter editing in Webmaster Tools, canonical tags, meta noindex,nofollow, etc. But Google should give more benefit of the doubt for common issues such as dev pages, secure page duplicates and other canonical issues.

  15. Things like duplicate content for Terms and Conditions are really such a minor issue for Google it's not worth even thinking about. Just keep the rest of your site non-duplicate and everything will be 100% fine. It would be crazy for a search engine to rank a site lower because it has standard TOS or cookie policies on it.

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