How to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues with Google?

[lbohen]

We have 1000s of audio book titles at our Web store. Google's Panda de-valued our site some time ago because, I believe, of duplicate content. We get our descriptions from the publishers which means a good
deal of our description pages are the same as the publishers = duplicate  content according to Google.

Although re-writing each description of the products we offer is a daunting, almost impossible task, I am thinking of re-writing publishers' descriptions using The Best Spinner software which allows me to replace some of the publishers' words with synonyms.

I have re-written one audio book title's description resulting in 8% unique content from the original in 520 words.

I did a CopyScape Check and it reported "65 duplicates." CopyScape appears to be reporting duplicates of words and phrases within sentences and paragraphs. I see very little duplicate content of full sentences
or paragraphs.

Does anyone know whether Google's duplicate content algorithm is the same or similar to CopyScape's?

How much of an audio book's description would I have to change to stay away from CopyScape's duplicate content algorithm?

How much of an audio book's description would I have to change to stay away from Google's duplicate content algorithm?

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Larry,

I know it is a daunting task and it would be great if there was some tool or software to help but unfortunately I don't think you will get the results you are after using any software (let alone one that has the word spinner in its name!). Check out a recent wbf video on this subject here: http://moz.com/blog/how-unique-does-content-need-to-be-to-perform-well-in-search-engines-whiteboard-friday

Long and short of it, there is no magical % number that will get you below the duplicate content bar. Even though it is daunting, realistically your only sure fire way to ensure your content is original is to make it original! I would suggest starting with your best selling/most popular products and work your way down.

Probably not what you were hoping to hear!