Duplicate content issue with Wordpress tags?

[BlueLinkERP]

Would Google really discount duplicate content created by Wordpress tags? I find it hard to believe considering tags are on and indexed by default and the vast majority of users would not know to deindex them . . .

[MattJanaway]

You should noindex your tags, yeah. All the post snippets are just duplicated content. There are loads of other stuff you should also noindex. If you haven't already, install the Yoast Plugin. There are loads of guides online on how to set it up to block the correct pages.

[BlueLinkERP]

But what's the harm in leaving it indexed? Surely Google sees millions and millions of duplicate content issues with Wordpress blogs - it must ignore them. The average blogger does not know about duplicate content issues so Google must be aware of this.

Also, if people are finding you via tags then obviously it is a problem to deindex them - a problem that may outweigh duplicate content issues even if Google does penalize duplicate content on Wordpress blogs.

[MattJanaway]

The harm is that Google may well class your site as having duplicated content issues. This wont always happen but there is a chance. There are also a few other issues which are covered well by Dan Petrovic (link at the bottom).

Google does indeed see millions of duplicate content issues and it tries its hardest to only rank one version of that content.

You can always make your category pages the landing pages for keywords and not the tags. If you are already being found from tags then don't deindex them but there will be a risk that a Panda data refresh or algo update may hurt your site.

http://dejanseo.com.au/effect-of-tag-clouds-on-seo/