Does duplicate content affect SEO on Google?

There is a common misconception that having duplicate content on a website can negatively affect search results.

However, Google’s John Mueller has confirmed this is not the case. This blog post will explain all about what he has revealed about Google and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Duplicate content is normal

Mueller has stated that having duplicate content should not have “a negative ranking score associated with it”. Google will just attempt to “find the best matching page”.

Entire pages of content

If there are entire pieces of content has been duplicated, this would not send any negative ranking signals. The way that Google will rank this is use one version and not show the other.

Certain elements of a webpage

If there are elements such as a header and footer that are repeated across a website, this again will not affect search ranking results.

This is confirmed by Mueller in the following quote “so if you have the same content on multiple pages then we won’t show all of these pages. We’ll try to pick one of them and show that. So it’s not that there’s any negative signal associated with that.”

Using E-commerce as an example

Mueller also used the example of e-commerce to demonstrate this.

With a product, there are multiple retailers that may sell it, along with having similar product descriptions.

In this case, Google would not have negative signals from looking at details that appear on the sites of other retailers. The same applies for duplicate content.

You can read more on this topic from Google’s John Mueller here.

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