Should we include ANY generic product descriptions on our site?

[reddogmusic]

Until recently all of our product pages (we run an eCommerce site) had product descriptions copied directly off the manufacturer's sites. Obviously this isn't good from an SEO perspective, so we were planning to write our own original copy.

My question is: should we keep the manufacturer's copy too? This is often good, useful content from a customer's perspective, but obviously it's not original.

Any help appreciated!

Alex

[matbennett]

If it is genuinely useful to customers and it won't result in you just repeating everything then include it as well.  Try to give your unique content priority though: higher up the page, more obvious.  I've often included manufacturer descriptions in a separate tab labelled as such.

[Aran_Smithson]

Hi,

I would completely re-write the content, ensuring that the useful info included in the manufacturers content is included in the re-write.

[baptisteplace]

Partial duplicate content can be OK if you provide your own product description. The main problem is writing a product description containing useful, unique content that is not already in the manufacturer's description.

If you have the budget to make these useful descriptions, do it and remove the manufacturer content.