Empty public profiles are viewed as duplicate content. What to do?
-
Hi!
I manage a social networking site. We have a lot of public user profiles that are viewed as duplicate content. This is because these users haven't filled out any public profile info and thus the profiles are "empty" (except for the name). Is this something I should worry about? If yes, what are my options to solve this?
Thanks!
-
This is totally down to a matter of personal preference. I'd be looking for something in the way of original text. A good way is to ask more question then total up the number of words in their answers. You can also flesh that out by introducing snippets from recent activity, connections etc. Do though try to include something in the way of original content in order to turn off the no-index.
I think your example isn't bad. Add a personal slogan, or line of introduction and it is probably enough.
-
Ok thanks! How can I determine the threshold for having profiles indexed? A common case is where a profile has a name, a company name and 1-3 links to other social profiles (twitter, linkedin etc..). Would a page like this be interesting enough to index? From a visitor's perspective I think it is; not necessarily for the content, but it has enough potential for click-through (to the company profile or to signup because the the visitor wants to connect with the owner of the profile).
-
That is quite easily dealt with. Set some minimum levels and add a meta noindex to those profiles that don't meet that standard.
If you combine that with encouragement to fill out profiles ("Your profile is only 10% complete. Add your education now for +3%" etc) then you can solve the duplicate issue and also the underlying cause. As they get completed they can start getting indexed again and you have a better website at the end of it.
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
-
How to fix thin content issue?
Hello! I've checked my website via Moz and received "thin content" issue: "Your page is considered to have "thin content" if it has less than 50 words" But I definitely know that we have 5 text blocks with unique content, each block consist of more than 50 words. Do you have any ideas what may cause this issue? Thanks in advance, Yana
On-Page Optimization | | yanamazault0 -
Duplicate Page Content - default.html
I am showing a duplicate content error in moz. I have site.com and site.com/default.html How can I fix that? Should I use a canonical tag? If so, how would i do that?
On-Page Optimization | | bhsiao0 -
Internal Duplicate Content/Canonical Issue/ or nothing to worry about
Unfortunately, my developer cannot give me an answer to this so I really do hope someone can help. The homepage of my website is http://www.laddersfree.co.uk however I also have a page http://www.laddersfree.co.uk/index.php that has a page rank and essentially duplicates the home page. Does someone know what this is? Do I need to get my developer to do a 404? It is worrying that he has not come back to me. Thanks Jason
On-Page Optimization | | gymmad0 -
Duplicate links from forum what to do?
After a crawl it found over 5k errors and over 5k warnings. Those are: Duplicate page content; Duplicate page title; Overly-Dynamic URLs; Missing Meta descr; Title Element too long. All those come from domain.com/forum/ I don't need SEO on forum so what should I do? What could be an easy solution to this? No index? No follow? Please help
On-Page Optimization | | OVJ0 -
Will google regards www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 as the duplicate content?
Our site has some affiliates, and the affiliate id is the suffix following with the url "?xxxxxx". I can see Google Analytics regards www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 as the different page, but in fact they are exactly the same, the version www.example.com?331457 is the visit from our affiliate site. And yesterday I start up my Moz Pro membership, and in the crawl issues I see SEOMoz thinks www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 are duplicate content. Is this really an issue? Will the search engine thinks these two pages are duplicate content?? Thanks you guys My first question here, not too dumb I hope. -----------------Update---------------------- I should explain how our affiliates work. We are an eBook related software company, and anyone can apply an affiliate account on the transaction platform "RegNow" even without our permission because we have opened the affiliate door. When a visitor come to our order page from an affiliate site, the url will add the affiliate ID suffix "?xxxxxx", and it's combined in cookies. After the deal is done, the affiliate gets his commission. So no matter how I customize the url with URL Builder, there must be the suffix "?xxxxxx". It's the ID of our affiliate, or they will get nothing. So the key point is, will the suffix "?331457" makes Google think www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 are different pages and duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
On Page reports is empty
Hello, Yesterday I created my PRO account, I have several urls in top 50 instead of a have no report in On Page Reports, how low take the system for generating this? Thank you, Carlos
On-Page Optimization | | cahams0 -
Duplicate Content Issues with Forum
Hi Everyone, I just signed up last night and received the crawl stats for my site (ShapeFit.com). Since April of 2011, my site has been severely impacted by Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm updates and we have lost about 80% of our traffic during that time. I have been trying to follow the guidelines provided by Google to fix the issues and help recover but nothing seems to be working. The majority of my time has been invested in trying to add content to "thin" pages on the site and filing DMCA notices for copyright infringement issues. Since this work has not produced any noticeable recovery, I decided to focus my attention on removing bad backlinks and this is how I found SEOmoz. My question is about duplicate content. The crawl diagnostics showed 6,000 errors for duplicate page content and the same for duplicate page title. After reviewing the details, it looks like almost every page is from the forum (shapefit.com/forum). What's the best way to resolve these issues? Should I completely block the "forum" folder from being indexed by Google or is there something I can do within the forum software to fix this (I use phpBB)? I really appreciate any feedback that would help fix these issues so the site can hopefully start recovering from Panda/Penguin. Thank you, Kris
On-Page Optimization | | shapefit0 -
Can internal duplicate content cause issues?
Hello all mozzers - has anyone used nitrosell? we use them only because their inventory connects to ours epos point but because they have thousands of 301s on our domain we are getting duplicate content because different sizes of products (we sell womenswear) are creating seperate URLS so we are duplicating both content and URLS - im curious as to whether anyone has experienced simillar problems that have affected their SERPS? Best wishes, Chris
On-Page Optimization | | DaWillow1