How can I avoid duplicate content when building a review widget?

[menachemp]

My website has a profile page for each of the home improvement contractors who signs up.  They accumulate reviews on those pages.  I want to build a review widget to display our reviews on our contractors' websites.  How can I avoid duplicate content issues for the reviews?

Example of a profile page with a few reviews:  http://www.thehomefixers.com/members/425/waterheaters-plus-llc.php

[KarlBantleman]

What content is going to be duplicated? The reviews?

The best way would be to add a canonical tag to the website. You need to identify the main page the content is going to be on then add the canonical tag. For example, If you have 4 pages with similar content then pick the page that has more authority and canonicalise the others to that page.

Here's more info on the canonical tag https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

[max.favilli]

What percentage of page content would be duplicate?

I am asking because I remember seeing a video of our spiritual guide Matt Cutts addressing that, and he said at google they do understand content sometimes is quoted, cited, etc... And it all depends on how much text is duplicated when you quote, cite...

But unfortunately he was not saying how much is too much.

[menachemp]

Can the canonical tag be applied to only a portion of a page's content?  (basically, everything within the review widget?)

[KarlBantleman]

No, it would be for the whole page. It's good practise to have the canonical tag on anyway though

[menachemp]

But would I be able to get the canonical tag on the client website via the widget code?  Or I'd need two separate code snippets for installation

[Porteame]

Does it apply with content writen about a product, and the description writen inside the product caracteristics in my e-commerce store?

Right now I have the same info in the product info page, and the product in the store...

Should I write different info for both pages?

[David-Kley]

"I want to build a review widget to display our reviews on our contractors' websites."

If you are going to be displaying it as a widget on their website, I'm not sure what duplicate issue you are expecting. You would not have the same reviews across mutiple sites if you are adding contractor-specific reviews to a contractor-specific site. Unless you are referring to having the review content displayed on your siet where they sign up, and also on their site as a widget. Even if that is the case, you will have so many differences between the two pages and surrounding supporting text I doubt you would see any if at all negative effects.

Duplicate content penalties are aimed at people who use multiple pages of exact or highly similar content to try and manipulate search engine rankings. Just by having a few reviews that are the same across a few pages I dont think you would be grouped into that.

[menachemp]

Thanks - the problem is that the remainder of the page is also likely to be somewhat duplicate - it's mostly NAP data, business tagline or coupon offers, which are likely to be extremely repetitive as these businesses often have dozens of listings, all with the same info.  The reviews are really our only differentiating content from all their other listings.

If the reviews popped up on their sites as well (via our widget) would a link back to their profile page (part of the widget) be enough to indicate to Google that we were the original source?  I don't think canonical tags will be an option.

[MonicaOConnor]

I think you should use a review aggregator like YotPo. These will deliver reviews to your contractor's sites without duplicating the content because the content won't be in the source code. Any plug in you can design will prevent duplicate content. You will basically display the content without it being in the code. The only HTML the robot will see is the coding for the review system.