Templated content = duplicate content?

[scanlin]

I'm curious where the line is drawn for "duplicate content" by the search engines. Obviously the same article, or even the same article with minor edits, can and should be detected as duplicate.

I have a use case where there is a database of similar, but not duplicate, content that changes as time passes. I want to serve this content up via html template but don't want the 1000 pages to be considered duplicates of each other.

Example: Imagine local weather. You could create a template for city name, longitude, latitude, altitude, and current weather conditions. The values for all fields would be different for each of the 1000 database entries (cities) and one of the "current weather conditions" would change frequently (hourly, let's say).

Now, if I have a nice heirarchical index pages (first one maybe points to 50 state sub-pages, and each state page points to 20 city pages) that point to the 1000 city-specific pages, would the city-specific pages be considered 'duplicate' since they are based on the same HTML template but all have different values in key areas? Does the answer change based on the % of the template (or visible text) that changes for each city?

My goal is to get these 1000 subpages as part of my site, have them indexable, and have them each flow a little bit of link juice to my home page.

Best practices? What should I be careful of?

Thanks!

[Thos003]

If you are running this on a single site then I would say per your example that you have enough unique variables that it wouldn't be considered duplicate content on your website. Giving each City, State, Weather, on a page should solve your problem. As long as the titles and headers of the pages are not all the same. But the only real way to know would be to test it. Validate it with webmaster tools, it will tell you if your pages are too similar.And if you do pull this off let me know. I am always interested in GEO specific content for our pest control service areas.

The problem I see you running into is creating enough unique content so that it's not duplicate content from other weather sites. Maybe run it against a copyscape.com query. That should let you know if the weather info is unique enough. I would test this on a small scale prior to launching the entire project. Just hand create 10 pages and run it against copyscape.

Now if you are trying to create a content generator for mulitple websites based on this same data set then you may run into duplicate content issues. ...But there may still be some value in this.

[G-Force]

Hi Mike,

This is an interesting question. Depending on the nature of the content, you might want to try to get user generated content on those pages to make them more unique and valuable.

Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.

[Thos003]

Excellent point. The more unique the content the higher the value.

[AlanMosley]

Often wondered myself
i think google makke the right choice. they would of thought about this and i am sure they get it right.

i have much the same thing on one of my sites, and they rank quite well, so i dont think they are seen as duplicates.

[scanlin]

It's a single site. It's not a weather app; I was using weather as an example. I have another (non-weather) data set that has similar characteristics -- 6 or 8 unique data points per item (a couple of which are dynamic and change as time passes). And several thousand of these items. I want to display them via template.

I guess I'll try it and see if Webmaster tools complains about dup content. Thanks for the ideas, guys...

[Thos003]

Figured it wasn't weather based... just sticking with the theme.

How's that saying go... "The good thing about the internet is that you can always test it, the bad thing is that you are always testing."

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Mike,

I'm wondering what you decided to do here, and if you have any interesting results that you'd be willing to share with the Q&A community. Thanks!

[komeksimas]

Don't you get any duplicate content messages at Google webmaster tools?

[komeksimas]

I'd like to know the answer too...

Our page is an e-commerce site, and Google sometimes gives the duplicate content reports for pages that don't match, but haven't got much of unique content. Thought maybe you solved the problem?