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What happens when you have duplicate content on your website?
When duplicate content is present, site owners can suffer rankings and traffic losses. These losses often stem from two main problems: To provide the best search experience, search engines will rarely show multiple versions of the same content, and thus are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the best result.
How does duplicate content affect search engine rankings?
While not technically a penalty, duplicate content can still sometimes impact search engine rankings. When there are multiple pieces of, as Google calls it, “appreciably similar” content in more than one location on the Internet, it can be difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query.
Which is the most common source of duplicate content?
Scrapers republishing your blog content on their own sites may be a more familiar source of duplicate content, but there’s a common problem for e-commerce sites, as well: product information.
What’s the best way to get rid of duplicate content?
In many cases, the best way to combat duplicate content is to set up a 301 redirect from the “duplicate” page to the original content page. When multiple pages with the potential to rank well are combined into a single page, they not only stop competing with one another; they also create a stronger relevancy and popularity signal overall.
Are there any cases of Google showing duplicate content?
In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved.
Can a search engine crawl a duplicate page?
If search engines can’t crawl pages with duplicate content, they can’t automatically detect that these URLs point to the same content and will therefore effectively have to treat them as separate, unique pages.
Why does Google treat duplicate content the same?
Technically, Google treats all duplicate content the same, so onsite duplicate content is really no different than offsite. But onsite is less forgivable because this is one type of duplication that you can actually control. It’s shooting your SEO efforts in the proverbial foot.
How to avoid duplicate URLs in Google search?
A better solution is to allow search engines to crawl these URLs, but mark them as duplicates by using the rel=”canonical” link element, the URL parameter handling tool, or 301 redirects. In cases where duplicate content leads to us crawling too much of your website, you can also adjust the crawl rate setting in Search Console.
When to ask about the duplicate content penalty?
If your SEO professional tells you that you’re at risk for a duplicate content penalty, ask them to show you why.