Faraz
Does Google penalize you for copying and pasting content from other sites these days?
Scenario:-
We have a Multivendor Ecommerce Marketplace. Before hiring an SEO (me) they made a website and uploaded with almost 9,000 SKUs (more SKUs will come). Their data entry team has copied and pasted the content of the product pages from Amazon, Noon and other marketplaces. The plagiarism is 70% to 95%, I checked the plagiarism on free online tools. So is it okay? Absolutely not, I think.
I know that Google can identify the Multivendor Ecommerce Marketplace websites and Google also knows that people copy-past Manufactures' content.
But what's the criteria and the right way to do it?
Because for 10,000 SKUs, writing 80% or 100% unique content will take a lot of time and will require a lot of content writers. Or do you know any Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software for writing and to automate the writing process for SKUs because Data Entry guys are not good at writing.
Need your guidance!
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No, Google doesn't penalise duplicate content and never has. It doesn't penalise AI content either. But not offering anything new, useful or unique in your content, you're not really giving Google any reason to ranki it highly or at all. As your clients have a lot of products, it may be worth finding out their most profitable product lines and starting from there. Run some tests and find out what works.
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Would it be okay to first index all URLs of SKUs then start working on improving the content?
Someone told me not to index your URLs with the content you copied from Amazon and other marketplaces, it would damage your reputation in the eyes of Google and it will take time build your bad reputation.
I told him indexing will take time and improving (writing) content will also take time. So why not submit a SKUs sitemap and index our product URLs first?
Note: I have not created the sitemap yet. Because I'm rearranging the category pages and making them in more depth.
Danie Β» Faraz
I would think it would be okay but haven't worked a lot with ecommerce so hopefully someone with more experience of Google products can answer. Definitely not an issue with web search though – I often create fast low quality content first to gather data then improve it later. Logically I can't see any reason why Google would mark a website down for copied product descriptions as most sellers do this anyway. There could be legal issues relating to plagiarism if you're using content copyrighted by amazon but Google would only get involved if a manual Digital Millennium Copyright Act Policy (DMCA) was submitted. If your using manufacturers descriptions, that should be fine.
Faraz βοΈ Β» Danie
How to check the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of Web Content such as for product pages?
Danie Β» Faraz
The DMCA is a us law that gives copyright holders legal recourse if their work is used without permission. They can submit a violation to the violators webhost to have the website shut down or to Google to have it removed from the search results. Only an issue if you use a us host or us-based Google search but each country has its own laws relating to copyright infringent. If you're using someone else's content it is prudent to check who owns the copyright and its usage terms.
Maebh Β» Danie
Agreed but with ecommerce, focus on the category pages first, that's where you will get the easy wins.
Ibra π
The situation for e-commerce is totally different
80% of e-commerce listing are 100% copied
You should not care about product listing and focus on categories and brands lists
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They use ads though
David
"Penalize" is the most misused term in the whole SEO industry. No, you won't be penalized for duplicate content unless its copyrighted, manipulative or just outright spam.
However, you may not be rewarded for that content either (there are plenty of examples of sites which are rewarded for duplicate content but that's another matter). The fact is, you are competing with other sites for each of those 9000 SKUs so you should do anything you can to get an an advantage. Having unique and useful content will help to give that edge.
Would it be okay to first index all URLs of SKUs then start working on improving the content?
Someone told me not to index your URLs with the content you copied from Amazon and other marketplaces, it would damage your reputation in the eyes of Google and it will take time build your bad reputation.
I told him indexing will take time and improving (writing) content will also take time. So why not submit a SKUs sitemap and index our product URLs first?
Note: I have not created the sitemap yet. Because I'm rearranging the category pages and making them in more depth.
David Β» Zain
Yeah get it all indexed and update it in priority order. Out of interest, are you using noindex tags on those you don't want indexed? You might find it hard to undo them.
Zain Β» David
Website is developed on React (frontend) and Ruby on Rails (backend). They don't even have SEO fields at the backend dashboard to optimize a webpage. So I asked the Web Development team that I want these xyz fields including "noindex" field (such as check box). So are you asking about putting noidex tags on pages like "cart", "checkout", "account", "admin", "login", etc?
And what do you mean by this "You might find it hard to undo them."? Please explain!
David
Basically, if you're using meta robots noindex then you're telling Google that they don't need to worry about the page so it will eventuall stop crawling it. If you remove the noindex tag then Google often won't recrawl the page to find out.
Lori
No penalty, but you're also not giving Google any reason to rank your page over one that has been around longer. Products are also very hard to rank unless your overall site has decent authority. Generally for a large site, I recommend concentrating on the 20% that are your money makers.
Daniel
Copy and pasting content its not indexed by Google π€ so, no penalization,but also not appear on google, good luck
Patricia
Duplicate description on branded products can actually be copied word for word but I wouldn't do it. I actually would make the description slightly different because I think it will eventually get your products demoted. . For instance I have an e-commerce business that uses brands like Gildan, Next Level, Sublivie, etc; ALL well-known brands. So there isn't too much you can make up on branded products, but I would make mine slightly different.
Strauss
You might find that Google canonicalizes the original. That seems to be as far as any 'punishment' goes as far as I have seen, but I don't do this on the regular. I would like to think that they recognize the content block and attribute any love to the original. Would be good to test though. See where the Google attributed canonicalization limit lies.
David
As above. You simply won't rank anywhere is you copy paste. Or even change a few words.
Want to rank, you have got to write original content. That's one of the reasons Amazon tops the charts consistently… authority
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