What is considered duplicate content?

[A_Q]

Hi,

We are working on a product page for bespoke camper vans: http://www.broadlane.co.uk/campervans/vw-campers/bespoke-campers . At the moment there is only one page but we are planning add similar pages for other brands of camper vans. Each page will receive its specifically targeted content however the 'Model choice' cart at the bottom (giving you the choice to select the internal structure of the van) will remain the same across all pages.

Will this be considered as duplicate content? And if this is a case, what would be the ideal solution to limit penalty risk: A rel canonical tag seems wrong for this, as there is no original item as such. Would an iFrame around the 'model choice' enable us to isolate the content from being indexed at the same time than the page?

Thanks,

Celine

[DSM_UK]

Hi Celine

Good news, as you haven't made all the pages yet, now is the easiest time to implement new things! : -)
The best way I would recommend is utilising HTML Semantics http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.asp

You would have your main content inside the

and any supporting but repetitive content in <inside>tags.

Hope that helps!

King Regards

Jimmy</inside>

[DirkC]

According to Google: "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar."

The example you give is a bit in between: it contains a part which is unique - however the tabulated content which would appear on each page contains more content than the unique part. Personally I don't think that these pages would be considered duplicate content. However, if you want to be on the save side you could make a separate page with all possible configurations. This would also have the advantage that you could do without the tab's (end of of 2014 John Muller indicated that hiding content under tabs is not the best seo strategy (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html).

I wouldn't go for the iframe solution - it's a bit an outdated way to present information.

Hope this helps,

Dirk

[niallfred]

Hi there,
If the higher percentage of content on each page is different from any other you should be OK. However I'd be worried about producing a whole bunch of pages like this.

[LauraSultan]

This type of duplicate content is common on ecommerce websites, and it isn't necessarily a big problem. However, given the fact that there will be a higher percentage of duplicate content than unique content, you run the risk of some of your pages being omitted from search results for certain queries. If that is the case, searchers will see "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the (# here)already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

This isn't really a penalty. It's just Google being efficient with their algorithm. It shouldn't be a problem for highly targeted searches, but you may lose a little search visibility for more generic searches.

My advice is to get creative and find new ways to add more unique content to your product pages. Add testimonials, user-generated reviews, camper van adventure stories, etc.

You are right that canonical tags are wrong for this situation. Using an iframe doesn't make much sense either. Google has stated that they try to associate iframe content with the page it's embedded on anyway.

Further information:

• http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2319706/googles-matt-cutts-a-little-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-your-rankings
• https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content

[Mike.Bean]

A quick way to figure this out.

Copy a entire paragraph from the content in question. Paste the whole paragraph into Google search.

any close matches? Then It is duplicate.

Thanks,

- Mike Bean

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Celine,

Google is very smart at finding content these days, so I would avoid any possible ways of trying to hide it, but looking at what is there, I wouldn't worry too much.

When looking at the model choice at the bottom of the page, it is the same for a reason, and there is no way around it. However, I wouldn't think that Google would see that as duplicate content. Lists in this manner don't normally cause issues and as mentioned above, it is more often larger 'chunks' of content that causes issues.

There are other considerations that you might want to think about before releasing a lot more pages in this manner, and one if them is making sure Google won't see the pages appearing for no other reason that to draw in search traffic for particular phrases.

Keep the pages well stocked with unique relevant content and you should be good to go.

-Andy