Duplicate listings content

[EdoubleD]

I've been listing our business on various business and wedding directories most of which require a short description of the business. I've written up a "boilerplate" description which is fairly similar to one we have on the site. If I use this content on multiple listings sites will it cause me issues with google seeing it as duplicate content and finding it difficult to decide which pages to rank?Most of these sites are supplier directories so I don't expect people to site search them for our business they are much more likely to browse categories but will it affect organic results for our actual website?

Should I be writing a different piece of copy for each listing which requires a company description to avoid any issues?
Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Edward,

Great question! It's important to understand that, in the Local business arena, business descriptions will automatically be duplicated across numerous platforms because certain data providers feed listing info to many others. If you take a look at David Mihm's Local Search Ecosystem graphic, you will see how some of these relationships work:

https://getlisted.org/static/resources/local-search-data-providers.html

So, because this type of duplication is baked into the system, there is nothing you can do about some amount of duplicate content when you are creating listings for your local business.

That being said, I think it's a good idea to write 2-3 different descriptions when building citations because different platforms allow you to publish descriptions of different lengths. Take advantage of those platform that allow you to offer a fuller write-up of the business, by all means! And that goes for wedding-specific directories as well. If you are allowed to write a unique and detailed description on a prestigious wedding site, I think it will be worth your time to create something new. But you will never avoid duplication in a citation campaign, simply because of the data feeds going from one platform to another. This is not something I would worry about.