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View Full Version : Duplicate Content: Problems and Solutions



vangogh
02-26-2009, 04:25 PM
Duplicate content is a confusing topic for many. There's a lot of information out there and sadly a lot of it leads you to the wrong conclusions. At first glance you might think the problem with duplicate content is that your site can be penalized. That's not really true, though you can be penalized for excessive duplicate content.

The issue is more a filtering one than a penalty. Search engines don't want to show the duplicate pages in search results, since it's not useful to the searcher.

Michael Martinez wrote what I think is a really good overview of the situation with duplicate content and how it might potentially affect your site in search results.

The post is Duplicate content for SEO and SEO for duplicate content (http://www.seo-theory.com/2009/02/26/duplicate-content-for-seo-and-seo-for-duplicate-content/) and if you have any questions about the subject this is a good post to read and start your learning.

The post looks at different situations involving duplicate content, discusses the potential problems and then offers several solutions for each.

Thought you might find the post useful and feel free to ask more questions here.

billbenson
02-26-2009, 05:10 PM
It's a good read VG. I didn't understand how the "canonical URL meta tag" is used. Have you looked at it?

nealrm
02-26-2009, 05:14 PM
As I understand the new tag allows you to specify which set of pages with duplicated contact is the master page. A good example of it's use is when you have two pages with the same content but sorted in a different order.

billbenson
02-26-2009, 06:14 PM
Ok, that's kind of a good idea.

vangogh
02-26-2009, 06:26 PM
I haven't tested the new tag and in theory it's a good thing. You're still best to try one of the other ways that have been in place and use canonical as a fallback. Matt Cutts recreated a presentation he gave about the new canonical tag (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag-video/). It's a 20 minute video so be prepared to spend some time watching.

Some people I know are a bit skeptical of the new tag. In theory it sounds great, but some tests they've run would indicate it's not working as well as advertised. In some tests the duplicate version of the page was the one ranking instead of the one specified as the correct page.

I think it may have something to do with not enough time being given for the testing and it could be that the page in question wasn't crawled through any other means.

Overall the new canonical tag seems like a good idea. It's still early in its life to know how well it works, but my guess is in time it will work as advertised. Still it doesn't do anything new. There are a variety of other ways of doing the same thing. The new tag is for those who can't do those other things for one reason or another and it's also a simpler solution to implement.