Duplicate content – what it is and how to check for it

What is duplicate content?

In a nutshell, a duplicate contents is same content appearing on more than one unique page.

Now we can move on to practical matters: what impact does this type of content have on your site? Is duplicate content a harmless way to grow your website, or rather a tactic with a number of complications? How do search engines treat this type of content? Before we answer these questions, it’s important to understand the difference between duplicate and copied content.

Duplicate content vs copied content – what’s the difference?

Copied contents are deliberate and intentional duplication of some contents. Duplicate texts, on the other hand, are often the result of other activities, occur within one site and do not contain any malicious content.

For this reason, pages whose main content has been copied receive the lowest possible score from Google, and there is no penalty for duplicate text content.

The point raised above is important for understanding how Google treats different types of content that are found on more than one page.

How is duplicate content created?

In the vast majority of cases, duplicate content is not the result of deliberate actions, but only the effect of the website’s architecture or its content. Below you will find some of the most common situations:

• different variations and parameters of URL addresses (e.g. when the page has two versions, regular and mobile);
• domain address (“www.stronax.pl” and “stronax.pl”, if both contain the same content; a similar problem occurs with http:// and https://);
• duplicate content (e.g. in online stores where there are many references to product pages that use the same description provided by the manufacturer).

How to check for duplicate content on your website

Although Google does not punish duplicate content, it is worth making sure that there is as little content of this type as possible, which will certainly translate into better positioning. How to do it? The easiest way is to Google itself and use the so-called. search operators, i.e. commands that allow you to search for a specific type of content in the search engine.

If we want to check how many unique URLs on page X contain the word Y, just type in the search engine:

Google will display all pages on www.pagex.pl where the word “Y” appears. The more specific the word (or phrase you enter after “intitle:”) is, the more accurate your results will be. This simple method will allow you to quickly identify all occurrences of any word (even a whole sentence) on a selected page.

Equipped with such knowledge, we will be able to take appropriate steps, as a result of which the content of our website will become more and more unique.