Will duplicate product information paragraphs negatively impact our site?

[JWalmsVH]

We are selling paint and have separate pages for different colour cans, each with their own unique description.

We would like to include a few additional paragraphs of product information below each description, but this will be identical across all the products. Do you think this will be a problem being duplicate content?

[jasongmcmahon]

Hello,

How much of the copy is unique per page?

WRT to content originality, I've worked to is  80% unique content per page as a general rule.

[JWalmsVH]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your help, it would probably be about 50%, but we could look to make this more like 80% unique content if you think this will help.

[Alex_Ratynski]

Hi Justin,

Great question, to help answer that question I will use a quote from Google's support document regarding duplicate content.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en

"Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:

• Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
• Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
• Printer-only versions of web pages

"

I think your situation would likely fall under the similar category as "acceptable" like the store items example I highlighted. Keep in mind although duplicate content should really be avoided when possible, Google does NOT actually penalize site's for having it.

Although I would try to keep the overall amount of duplicate content to a minimum, it shouldn't be too big of an issue. Utilize the unique descriptions, in this case, you likely won't have to worry too much about the duplicate content.

I hope that helps!

Best,
Alex Ratynski

[effectdigital]

I wouldn't say there would be massive chances of a penalty here, that being said it's an area where you could be 'adding value' and uniqueness to your pages and you're not doing it. So your pages may be 'less competitive' and you may be missing out on an opportunity. It's more of a competitive missed opportunity than an 'error' per-se

In reality you should have one product page for each product and then just have 'product variants' for stuff like quantity, size, colour etc. On the modern web people find this easier to navigate and since many sites do offer that, they might seem like more competitive places to shop for paint cans than your site. Price does matter, but it's not the sole arbiter of how products are ranked on Google's search engine - other stuff matters too. Unless you have a virtual monopoly on the product (only you can sell it, or only you can sell it at a greatly discounted price due to a special relationship with the supplier) then I would consider the UX and design of your site. No one wants an 'arse-ache' of a browsing experience

Many tools will flag what you are about to do as duplicate content and they're technically right. But instead of going on some crazy copy-writing crusade, think about the architecture of your site. You can still have separate URLs for different product variations if you want, even via parameter-variables (though that's a bit of a 'basic' implementation). If you make it clear to Google through new, more streamlined architecture that they're all actually the same product, the duplicate description(s) won't matter 'as much' (though they'll still be a missed opportunity for more diverse rankings IMO)

You can make it even more apparent to Google that all the different variations are actually the 'same product' by utilising Product schema and some of the deeper stuff like ProductModel which will bind it all together. Whatever you implement, test it here. If this tool throws errors and warnings, keep working away until they're all fixed

Canonical tags are another option but they will decrease your ranking 'footprint' and in this case I wouldn't recommend them, despite 'slight' content duplication risk (which in reality, are mostly negligible)

Final note: you say you have 'unique' descriptions, but remember if they're used elsewhere online they're not unique. If they're unique internally that's great, but if you got them all from a supplier then... obviously loads of other sites are probably using them, which could easily be a big issue for you