Duplicate Content - And Google

[Mort-lemur]

Ok here is the scenario:

 

I have two stores on different domains selling similar items - BUT some of the items are identical, same description, same image, same title

 

Site 1 appears on the first page of google

 

site 2 appears much much later (eg 7th page)

 

Im assuming that site two was crawled second and is being dropped down the rankings due to the duplicate content for these items.

 

So I need to do something about it .....

 

My question is: How different would the info for a product need to be to avoid being seen as duplicate across domains? and what is the most important factor - the description? the title? the part number? or all of them?

 

 

[Hotclutch]

I don't believe there is a penalty for duplicate descriptions to cause a ranking disparity as you say above, there must be other factors at play to cause that. It's quite common for ecommerce stores to have duplicate descriptions, just putting down the description given by the supplier, and google still ranks them.

[clustersolutions]

I kinda have to agree, but Heather you have a pot of gold in front of you. I would pour through the webmaster and analytic data and try to id the possible reasons that one site ranks higher than the other...you probably have a control case as you tweak things, too. Nice!

[♥kymation]

Google considers the entire page, not just the description. Sometimes just changing the order of the page elements, and having different boxes in different order, is enough to keep two osCommerce sites from being considered duplicates. Or at least I've done this in the past.

 

I agree with @@Hotclutch and @@clustersolutions -- you likely have other factors at play here.

 

Regards

Jim

[Dan Cole]

@@Mort-lemur

 

Heather I read this post recently which supports the comments/posts you received here.  I thought the explanation and advice was good and worth a read.

 

‘If I use the same product description on multiple sites is that duplicate content?’

• Short answer: No, it doesn’t meet the definition of “duplicate content” in SEO.

• Rationale: Sites all over the web use manufacturers’ descriptions on their product pages. Many of those sites rank very well. It’s a fact of life in the ecommerce world that we don’t always have the luxury of writing custom product descriptions. But while it’s not considered duplicate content, there is a benefit to writing custom copy for products.

Optimization and custom content can make your products appear more relevant than those from sites that use canned descriptions. Maybe you can’t do it for all of your products, but could you do it for the top 10 percent? The top one percent? The top 20 best sellers, the ones with the biggest margin or the ones that you need to sell the most of from a business strategy standpoint? Try not to think of SEO as all or nothing, but rather as a process by which you can work to optimize the areas that matter most to your business first.

 

The full Pratical Ecommerce article I clipped it from can be found here...

 

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/92604-Top-5-SEO-Questions-at-Practical-Ecommerce-Ignite-2015

 

Dan

[smith7905]

there could be many factors for this.  perhaps one of the websites have higher quality backlinks.