I’ve been hearing a lot about duplicate content hurting SEO. Some people say it’s a big deal, others say it’s not a huge problem. What’s the real story? Should I be worried about duplicate content on my site, or is it just overblown?
Honestly, it’s not as bad as people think. Google doesn’t have a specific penalty for duplicate content unless they think you’re doing it on purpose to manipulate rankings. But yeah, it can still cause issues like splitting your backlinks or showing weird URLs in search results.
@Brielle
Wait, what do you mean by ‘splitting backlinks’? How does that work?
ProfessorKay said:
@Brielle
Wait, what do you mean by ‘splitting backlinks’? How does that work?
Oh, so like… if you have the same content on two different URLs, other sites might link to both versions. So instead of all your backlinks going to one URL, they’re split between the two. It kinda weakens the SEO juice you get from those links.
@Brielle
SEO juice? Lol, that’s a new one for me. But I get what you mean now, thanks for explaining!
The biggest thing to worry about with duplicate content is crawling. If Google spends too much time crawling the duplicate pages, it might not get around to crawling new pages. That can mess with indexing.
@jordansmith
Wait… how does that work exactly? They won’t crawl my new stuff?
Jane said:
@jordansmith
Wait… how does that work exactly? They won’t crawl my new stuff?
Pretty much. If you’ve got a lot of duplicate pages, it can waste Google’s crawl budget. They’ll spend time on those duplicates instead of crawling new or updated pages. It’s not common, but it happens more with slow websites.
I’ve had my content scraped a few times. The worst is when the scraped version starts outranking my original post. Has anyone else had that happen?
Raymond said:
I’ve had my content scraped a few times. The worst is when the scraped version starts outranking my original post. Has anyone else had that happen?
Yeah, it’s rare but it happens, especially if the scraper’s site has more authority than yours. Google usually gets it right, but if the scraped version outranks you, you might wanna reach out to the site or file a DMCA request.
@willyflorida
Yeah, I heard about the DMCA thing. Might have to try that next time. Thanks for the tip!
Also, just a heads up… if you’ve got the same page available at different URLs (like with tracking parameters or session IDs), Google might index the wrong version. Make sure to canonicalize or redirect when that happens.
@EmmanueBrown
Canonicalize? What does that mean?
Job said:
@EmmanueBrown
Canonicalize? What does that mean?
Basically, you’re telling Google which version of the page you want them to index. So if you’ve got several versions of the same page, you add a ‘canonical’ tag to the one you prefer. That way, Google ignores the others.
Tbh, if you’re using faceted navigation on an e-commerce site, that can create tons of duplicates too. Google’s gotta crawl all those filters, which is kinda like generating a million similar pages. Not fun.
@MysteryMaverick
Faceted navigation? Is that like the filter options on product pages?
Linny said:
@MysteryMaverick
Faceted navigation? Is that like the filter options on product pages?
Exactly. Each time someone uses a filter (like size, color, etc.), it creates a new URL. And if you don’t manage it, Google ends up crawling the same content over and over with slight variations.
@MysteryMaverick
Oh wow… I had no idea that could be a problem. Guess I need to keep an eye on that for my store.