Repeating Content Within Code On Many Pages

[kirmeliux]

Hi,

This is sort of a duplicate content issue, but not quite. I'm concerned with the way our code is written and whether or not it can cause problems in the future.

On many of our pages (thousands), our users will have the option to post comments. We have a link which opens a JavaScript pop-up with our comments guidelines. It's a 480 word document of original text, but it's preloaded in the source code of every page it appears on.

The content on these pages will be relatively thin immediately, and many will have thin content throughout. I'm afraid so many of our pages look the same in both code and on-site content that we'll have issues down the line.

Admittedly, I've never dealt with this issue before, so I'm curious. Is having a 480 word piece of text in the source code on so many pages an issue, or will Google consider it part of the template, similar to footer/sidebar/headers?

If it's an issue, we can easily make it an actual pop-up hosted on a SINGLE page, but I'm curious if it's a problem.

Thanks!

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi,

Just because you know it could cause any issues I would always try to get out of the way of the current problem and go with a pop up that is using it's own single page. It probably will also save on load time etc, so that will make it better in multiple cases.

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

Agreed that if the pop-up draws the content from a single page / URL, there's no duplicate content problem. JavaScript would still be required to pull the content up and produce the pop-up: as we understand it, Google and other search engines are not too keen on executing JS functions, so often won't be served the content. And even if they are, drawing that content from its own URL will mean it is not included in the source code or seen as being on the page.

Whether this content could hurt you as it is currently included is hard to prove either way, but drawing it from a different source with JS would alleviate the potential problem.

[kirmeliux]

Jane/Martin,

Thanks for the responses. I just wanted to verify what I was thinking before making a move. I agree with both of your points and I'm going to try and persuade the coders to make this an actual pop-up from a single static page.

Thanks again!