If UGC on my site also exists elsewhere, is that bad? How should I properly handle it?
-
I work for a reviews site, and some of the reviews that get published on our website also get published on other reviews websites. It's exact duplicate content -- all user generated. The reviews themselves are all no-indexed; followed, and the pages where they live are only manually indexed if the reviews aren't duplicate. We leave all pages with reviews that live elsewhere on the web nofollowed. Is this how we should properly handle it? Or would it be OK to follow these pages regardless of the fact that technically, there's exact duplicate UGC elsewhere?
-
You bet Mitch! Glad to help and let me know if there's anything else I can help answer. Hopefully maybe you'll get a few other opinions as well. As I'm sure you know, that's often valuable in search with so many nuances to the SEO game.
Good luck with your search efforts!
-
Definitely -- would still be nice to hear another opinion or two, but Todd was very specific and thorough. I've got some great, actionable takeaways from this conversation.
-
Really helpful thoughts all around. Sounds like we might continue to no-index the content for now (we assume that the descriptions of the programs are duplicate, since there's no way for us to efficiently check if people uploading program listings are just copy-pasting from their website -- reviews usually are the unique piece of content that allows us to move a page from noindexed to indexed).
Also, thanks for bringing the leave-a-review URLs to our attention -- I'll bring it up with my team this week!
Thanks again, Todd!
-
Did that help, Mitch?
-
Hey Mitch,
Thanks for the clarification--I think I understand your situation a little better now. Let me ask you this, are the pages your reviews sit on significantly different than the pages with the same reviews that your competitors have? Meaning, is the only cross-over the review portion of the content?
To answer your adjusted question, I would personally say no--review content is not different than any other type of content that could be construed as duplicate. I am wondering if you could solve your issue by differentiating the pages you have with reviews that match your competitors by adding other types of content to them. This might help add valuable context for a search engine as well as differentiate the page enough to help an engine sort out that they are different even though there is some content overlap. Just a thought.
My other thought on this is that maybe it's worth setting up a test? This is certainly a gray area and there are probably people who would have differing opinions from mine, so perhaps a good next step is planning and working on a test to see what happens with a small portion of pages?
If the content isn't thin, it sounds like you shouldn't have an issue with an algo like panda, so I don't see a huge risk in the test from what I understand of your situation.
If I've got your site right, I'm guessing you're asking about pages like this: http://www.gooverseas.com/study-abroad/austria/ies-abroad/47342 and whether or not you'd allow them to be indexed because the reviews at the bottom might be on other review sites. Again, if the content on the rest of the page is significant and not the same as what's on other similar pages, I wouldn't worry to much about it. If it is, I'd run a test and see what you can do.
Without doing more research, that's the best I can offer at this point!
Oh, and you might want to look into this (2 of many)...
That does look like something that would get you hit by panda.
Hope that helps and sorry if I'm still not understanding the question correctly.
-
Understood -- however, 1. It provides value and matches common user queries (i.e. "University of Michigan study abroad program reviews -- just made that exact query up though) 2. It's not lean content; we only think about indexing these pages when there are enough in-depth reviews (i.e paragraphs not a line or two). 3. I totally understand that that's usually the problem with duplicate content, but our competitors are ranking for these because we're being cautious of potential future algo updates and they're not -- so regardless of the fact that we're putting the content up first, they're getting the points.
My question is more along the lines of: is review content / user generated content treated differently than you traditional duplicate blog post? Is it OK if we index this page with reviews even though our competitor has already done so?
-
Personally, if they don't provide value for someone searching, I'd leave them noindexed. No reason to run the risk of an algo adjustment because of thin content. Duplicate content is mostly an issue because it makes it hard for search engines to determine which version to rank.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Technical Site Migration
Hello All- I have been in the SEO industry for about 4 years and feel fairly confident in my technical SEO; however, I am being asked to conduct a migration that is both a platform change (step 1) then a consolidation change (think of combining websites when a company is acquired) all within a 4-5 month time span. I feel like as I begin to create this multi-step checklist I would love to hear of others that have gone through something similar or have resources you could point me to form more of a process/procedure standpoint. Again - I feel confident in the technical output but I have a fairly junior team and want to execute this smoothly. Feel free to add recommendations or ask for clarification if my discussion question doesn't make sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instructure0 -
Enquiries stopped after site move
Hello, I really hope someone can help. We recently moved our website from a shared server with one host to a VPS with another. At the same time we decided it would be right to switch from the .co.uk to the .com and also purchase an SSL. Since the switch we have had zero enquiries (3 weeks ago) when we would normally average one a day. According to Google Analytics, I cannot see that traffic has been to adversely effected and rankings, though dropping very slightly have not dramatically fallen. We have tested the site rigirously and there are no issues with it we can see. I ensured at domain level that there was a 301 redirect on the .co.uk site as well. Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this would be the case? And/or whether switching it all back to where it was with the .co.uk would be a foolish idea? Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Opus4Marketing0 -
Adult Toys Sites
Does anyone know of any changes SEOwise when running an adult toy site versus a normal eCommerce site? Is there any tips or suggestions that are worth knowing to achieve rankings faster? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Disavow files on m.site
Hi I have a site www.example.com and finally have got the developers to add Google webmaster verification codes for: example.com m.example.com As I was advised this is best practice - however I was wondering does this mean I now need to add the disavow file. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Why does old "Free" site ranks better than new "Optimized" site?
My client has a "free" site he set-up years ago - www.montclairbariatricsurgery.com (We'll call this the old site) that consistently outranks his current "optimized" (new) website - http://www.njbariatricsurgery.com/ The client doesn't want to get rid of his old site, which is now a competitor, because it ranks so much better. But he's invested so much in the new site with no results. A bit of background: We recently discovered the content on the new site was a direct copy of content on the old site. We had all copy on new site rewritten. This was back in April. The domain of the new site was changed on July 8th from www.Bariatrx.com to what you see now - www.njbariatricsurgery.com. Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhatUpHud0 -
How is my 301 redirected site stealing rankings from the main site?
Hello, I have a site, drhobelt.com, that 301 redirects to the main site, drhonow.com. Not only is drhobelt.com still indexed, but it recently stole rankings from drhonow.com for "decompression belt" related terms. What could be causing this? How do I reclaim the rankings for drhonow.com? Thanks for reading!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Why do some sites have several types of sitemap?
Hello Mozzers, I often seem to work on websites with several types of sitemaps - e.g. an html sitemap - an xml sitemap - almost always with identical structure and content. Does anybody know the thinking behind this? Currently looking at site with php and xml sitemap sitting alongside one another. I'm guessing one is for site users to read (and also to aid indexing) and the other for search engines, to further aid indexing. Does Google have any preferences? Is there anything you should be wary of re: Google, if there are multiple sitemaps?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
What do I do about sites that copy my content?
I've noticed that there are a number of websites that are copying my content. They are putting the full article on their site, mentioning that it was reposted from my site, but contains no links to me. How should I approach this? What are my rights and should I ask them to remove it or add a link? Will the duplicate content affect me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0