Duplicate content, the distrubutors are copying the content of the manufacturer

[teconsite]

Hi everybody!

While I was checking all points of the Technical Site Audit Checklist 2015 (great checklist!), I found that the distrubutors of my client are copying part of the content to add it in their websites.

When I take a content snippet, and put it in quotes and search for it I get four or five sites that have copied the content. They are distributors of my client.

The first result is still my client (the manufacturer), but... should I recommend any action to this situation. We don't want to bother the distributors with obstacles.

This situation could be a problem or is it a common situation and Google knows perfectly where the content is comming from?

Any recommendation?

Thank you!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

You can do one of two things - either have them put a canonical tag on their page to your original content page, or have a link to your original content as the original source. I'd prefer the first option, or both.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[Linda-Vassily]

How much of your content are they using? If it is a small snippet, no need for concern. If it is a large amount, then yes, as Patrick says, a canonical tag on the distributors' sites would be good. But some people won't do that for whatever reason. And sometimes people don't like to put outside links on ecommerce pages that might take people away from a transaction.

Even in that case, you are OK though. Duplicate content doesn't cause a penalty as such, it just makes Google pick which one to show in search results and drop the others. It sounds like your client is established as the content originator, so they won't be the ones to be dropped.

If you wanted to be especially helpful to your distributors, you might tell them about this and frame it as something good they could do for themselves, rather than for you. "You know that since a lot of the content on your page is from our page, you run the risk of your page not being findable in search. Maybe you could write some special content about how you are featuring our widget in your special blue widgets collection and only use a small amount of the content from our page. That should help with your visibility."

Or something like that...

[ClaytonJ]

One other aspect to consider it "fetch for google".  Google sometimes takes time to naturally index content. Then often for a period - google index the first in time content that was indexed first (makes sense!). Hence if affiliates are copying your content and using fetch for google, (and you are not) they may get an advantage of a few days / weeks - until google sorts it out.

It is a great tool.  So if you know this practice is going on I would make "fetch for google" mandatory.

[teconsite]

Thank you Patrick!

[teconsite]

Very useful! Thanks!

[teconsite]

I will recommend that too. Thank you!

[CommT]

I recommend the manufacturer creates two separate descriptions - one for themselves, and one for their distributors. Requires more work, but I think is a nice solution to this problem.