Can I have the same item description on Amazon, eBay and my website?
-
Hi guys,
After looking on the Internet and reading the Learn SEO section on this site, I've realised that Google doesn't like duplicate content and penalises it, whether that's duplication on your own site or of another site's content.
We are an online retailer currently selling on different platforms including Amazon, eBay and our own ecommerce webstore.
Is it okay to have the same item description (i.e. main page copy) on each of these sites, or will our search rankings get negatively impacted?
Thank you in advance, I have researched on this issue also but I couldn't find a concrete answer.
- Tanay
-
- Depending on the authority of your website depends how quickly it gets indexed/ranked
For example:
-
- I have seen stuff on Quora get indexed by Google in about 15 minutes
- If you have a new site, it could take a couple of weeks
- Personally if I'm planning on launching a new product I'd post in the info on my site a couple of weeks before it's ready to launch with a coming soon banner. This is good for two (2) resons:
-
- You are generating buzz
- You are making sure Google knows your site published the content before anyone else.
- Is duplicate content an problem?
Yes.
If you get indexed first, is it your problem?
I'd say no
-
Pravin -
You definitely CAN... but that's not always the best idea. We do car dealer websites, and we feed our dealers' inventories out to hundreds of online classified sites. Many of our dealers also use eBay motors. Our system allows them to either write a single description that goes to every property, or separate descriptions for website, eBay, and classifieds.
You should be able to do the same thing with your site. You should always have a bit more detail and depth on your own website, but if your system doesn't allow for you to do so, you'll probably still be ok. The search engines are smart enough to realize that the different online stores and classified sites are all selling the same product (and won't assign a dupe content penalty).
Remember - you should always look at your website and create content/descriptions that your customers (and potential customers) will find the most useful and relevant. Write for people, not for search engines. Plus, you've got different audiences on the other sales platforms, so unique descriptions might help with conversions, based on the audience you're trying to reach. BUT, if you're not able to, you should be ok with using the same description across the board.
-
I would try and vary them if possible... Spending the most time on your sites product description.
This could also help your listings / website stand out from the rest.
-
I've used Amazon and eBay very often back then and between Amazon and eBay it shouldn't matter having the same description.
However, your own website should have more in depth details and should not be exactly similar to Amazon and eBay. Because although if you post the description own your site first, Amazon and eBay might just rank higher than you just because.
But from my experience, products generally have the same descriptions and details. If you create some sort of slight variation, it shouldn't be negatively effecting SEO.
My suggestion is keep Amazon and eBay same just because they rank well in the first place. For your own site, make slight variations.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Training - How Google Crawls & Indexes Websites
Hi Does anyone know of any online training resources/webinars/training UK based that will cover the following for SEO: Why monitoring how search engines crawl and index content is important and how this can improve your SEO performance Using Google advanced operators to evaluate website indexation How to use log file data to gain insight into how search engines crawl and index content Techniques to control how search engines crawl and index content How search engines deal with JavaScript, common frameworks and SEO considerations I'm trying to develop my technical knowledge - I have always been more focused on content/KWD research/optimisation. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Image in Quick Answer from Different Website?
I'm seeing quick answers where the answer and image are from different websites. Does anyone have any insight into what Google is doing? Example search term: "How to tie a knot" Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | reese52131 -
Meta Titles and Descriptions
Is there no use of writing Meta Titles and Descriptions? I have them added to 100's of my articles but Google picks the actual title from the URL and title in the article only... any reason for this? How can i check if my Meta title and Description are being seen by Search engines but it will just take time to index the new metas may be few more months to change in Search results.
Algorithm Updates | | skandlikp90 -
Complete website redesign: original domain vs subdomain vs new domain ?
Hello dear community fellas!
Algorithm Updates | | PayPro
The story goes like this: my company has a good ol' website launched back in 2008 and since then nothing much was updated there. Our rank dropped significantly because, well, barely any SEO was done for it. Me and my team decided to redesign the whole thing: content, structure, visuals, links, everything but this time really making it right. However, with our oldie we managed to get a nice user base, so we still want to get all the traffic juice out of it. Now the questions is where do you think is the best place to publish our new website: Our original domain www.companyname.com? Create a subdomain new.companyname.com? Totally new domain www.namecompany.com? Cheers!0 -
Why does Google Alerts call my website a blog?
Our company started a WordPress blog about 14 years ago. It has since added a third-party forum, a user-submitted photo gallery, and a huge database of searchable products. We also have almost 4000 posts. With all that said, Google Alerts often lists our content under blogs rather than websites. Sometimes it shows up in both? Does anyone know what criteria Google uses for determining the type of content, and how we can signal to them that we are a website?
Algorithm Updates | | TMI.com0 -
Can you be both penalised and uplifted in SERPS?
hello everyone, We've literally had dozens of high ranking pages which are location specific, wiped out of the Google.co.uk SERPs. Can't imagine that it is anything other than a manual penalty but no message has been sent by Google. For example "campervan hire surrey" would produce our surrey page at the top of the SERP, now this page has completely disappeared. On the other hand, we have been promoted on national keywords like "vw campervan hire" and "campervan hire" where we are second and third. Does anyone agree that this is a penalty?
Algorithm Updates | | swimwithfishes0 -
Google indexing my website's Search Results pages. Should I block this?
After running the SEOmoz crawl test, i have a spreadsheet of 11,000 urls of which 6381 urls are search results pages from our website that have been indexed. I know I've read that /search should be blocked from the engines, but can't seem to find that information at this point. Does anyone have facts behind why they should be blocked? Or not blocked?
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10 -
Does anybody know of solid statistical examples of websites improving CTR via rich snippets?
There has been a fair deal of broad speculation that "rich snippets improve CTR". The recent rich snippet infographic that SEO Moz came out with mentioned this. However the only solid examples I could find was from an example on Search Engine Land. http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-a-30-increase-in-ctr-with-structured-markup-105830 Does anybody know of any other success examples with solid data of improved search share CTR rates when rich snippets were implemented?
Algorithm Updates | | southernresearch0