The FTC has been cracking down on companies that are using misleading descriptions for their products. Google is now taking a proactive approach to this issue by penalizing duplicate manufacturer product descriptions. This will help consumers get the most accurate information about what they are buying, while cutting out the shady practices of some companies.
Google has released a blog post on how they use duplicate content in their search engine. They state that it is important to follow the guidelines for using duplicate content, and not to fall into the trap of copy and paste or cut and paste.
In an SEO Office Hours chat, Google’s John Mueller explained how the company handles product descriptions that are duplicated from the manufacturers. Mueller reassured that it isn’t an issue and explained how Google selects which pages to display in search results.
How Can I Avoid Duplicate Content Problems?
The individual who asked the inquiry was worried about an ecommerce shop that utilizes the manufacturer’s stock product descriptions. He wanted to know whether there was a method to prevent any bad ranking implications from using the manufacturer’s duplicate product descriptions.
The individual who posed the inquiry wondered whether connecting to the original source might help prevent problems with duplicate material.
Using Manufacturer Product Descriptions, according to Google’s John Mueller
There are no penalties for duplicate content.
To avoid the repercussions of duplicating material, John Mueller began by stating that they do not need to connect to the original source.
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He stated that he didn’t have to take that step since duplicate material doesn’t have an algorithmic penalty or create damage.
Mueller had this to say:
“When it comes to duplicating material, there are two things to consider.
For starters, there is no penalty for duplicating material.
So…even before you go too deep, the only time we’d have a penalty, an algorithmic action, or a human action is if the whole website is entirely copied content,…if it’s one website crawling other websites, for example.
It’s absolutely acceptable if they are ecommerce sites and you have the same description but the rest of your website is distinct.
You don’t have to be concerned about being demoted or losing your ranking.”
How Google Looks for Duplicate Content on Websites
Mueller went on to explain how Google deals with goods resellers that post manufacturer product specifications.
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He went into great length about how Google is OK with sites that have product descriptions that are identical to those on the manufacturer’s website being ranked.
According to John Mueller,
“When it comes to duplicate material, we look at two, basically, distinct things.
On the one hand, we examine if the whole page is identical.
And it includes things like the header and footer, as well as the store’s location and other things like that, which in your instance would not be the case since one is perhaps a manufacturer’s website with the same description but everything else is different.
That’s the most basic kind of duplicate content.”
Duplicate Product Descriptions and Google’s Ranking
Mueller then went through the factors that go into ranking web sites with duplicate content.
He said,
“Then there’s the second type, which deals with things like descriptions. When we display a snippet in the search results, this plays a role.
Essentially, we strive to avoid creating search results pages with snippets that are identical to those seen on other websites.
If someone is looking for something generic that is just in the product description and the snippets that we would display for your website and for the manufacturer were identical, we would attempt to select one of those sites and show it alone.
That’s the other side of the duplicate content tale… It’s a little more straightforward.
However, if someone is looking for…something generic in the description and we can tell they want to purchase it, and you’re the best source or nearby source of that product, or you have it in stock, or whatever, we’ll display your site instead of the other one.
And none of this is reliant on your annotations, such as the source of the description.
Basically, we have this description, we want to display it in search, and we’ll choose the best website for this description to show. So, from that perspective, I believe that having unique descriptions on your websites is usually a smart idea.
However, if you have a large number of goods, this may not always be feasible.
In addition, we would not penalize a website for having redundant product descriptions.”
Google accepts duplicate product descriptions.
While it’s common knowledge that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, it’s less common knowledge how Google determines that a website is a shop and that it’s different from the manufacturer whose product is for sale at that store by looking at items like the header and footer.
Mueller also said that Google does not want the same identical snippets to appear in the search results for every ranking web page.
That may seem obvious, but in the race to rank for “Keyword XYZ,” some may overlook it by including those keywords in the title tag and headings, despite the fact that two or three competitors already rank with the exact same keywords in their titles, ignoring the fact that Google ranks pages with synonyms in the title…
Mueller has mentioned several scenarios in which Google might prefer to rank a reseller above a manufacturer:
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- When the user’s desire to purchase is obvious, and the reseller is the best source for the goods,
- The reseller is local, and the best outcome is a local store.
Overall, Mueller presented a number of intriguing points to consider.
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Google’s Selection Process for Product Pages with Duplicate Content from Manufacturers
At the 55-minute mark, John Mueller responds to the question:
Google has published a blog post on how to use duplicate content product descriptions. The article includes some tips on how to avoid using the same text for different manufacturers.
Related Tags
- google duplicate content checker
- two websites with same content
- seo duplicate content product pages
- how to fix duplicate content
- posting the same blog on two sites
