An SEO professional was concerned about their products and how they are being presented on the website. They were also worried about creating duplicate meta descriptions.
More specifically, they were wondering about products that are produced for a specific age range within the same material technique.
However, the only thing different is the design.
Their concern is about duplicate content: can they write one and only one high quality product description for all products? Or, should they create entirely unique descriptions for each one?
They raised the possibility of this reducing the quality of the content overall as a result.
John explained that unique descriptions would not necessarily reduce the quality of the content. He also presents the argument that it’s possible to have both unique descriptions and high quality descriptions.
Additionally, he stated that Google could indeed see this as duplicate content. However, they would not demote a website just because of duplicate content.
When Google looks at a site with duplicate content, perhaps many duplicate descriptions across hundreds of pages, Google will likely pick one out of these several pages to show in the search results.
There isn’t a demotion that happens, per se, but it’s really picking one or two pages to show because of this duplicate content.
It’s more of a filter.
He then went on to say that if somebody is searching for that content, it doesn’t make sense for Google to show every single one of these pages as a result.
He also pointed out that it’s important to have some kind of text content in the description that covers the visual element of your product.
If you don’t have anything like this in the meta description, then it’s hard for Google to show the product properly in the search results.
He mentioned an example: say that someone is searching for blue shoes. But in your product description, you never mention what color the shoes are in.
If someone is searching for these blue shoes specifically, then Google will have a hard time displaying your site in the search results because of this ambiguity.
This happens at approximately the 45:08 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 45:08
Then back to the e-commerce question, I sell handmade shoes, they’re all produced for a specific age range, within the same material, technique, etc. But only the design is different. Would it be counted as duplicate content by Google if I write one and only high quality product description for all? Or is it better to have unique descriptions for each one, which reduces the quality of the content?
John (Answer) 45:36
I don’t know if unique descriptions would reduce the quality of the content. So from that point of view, I would kind of argue that you can have both unique descriptions and high quality descriptions. So that kind of that last part, I would ignore.
But the general question with regards to duplicate content is, we would probably see this as duplicate content, but we would not demote a website because of duplicate content. So from a practical point of view, what would happen is, if someone is searching for a piece of text that is within this duplicated description on your pages, then we would recognize that this, this piece of text is found on a bunch of pages on your website.
And we would try to just pick maybe one or two pages from your website to show. So it’s not that we would demote your website or kind of penalize the website in any way because it has duplicate content. It’s more from a practical point of view, we recognize you have this content on a lot of your pages. So if someone is searching specifically for that content, it doesn’t make sense for us to show all of those pages.
And that’s kind of reasonable when when people are searching for a piece of content, they don’t need to find all of the pages within your website that have that piece of content.
The thing I think to kind of watch out for here is if you don’t have anything into textual content at all that covers the visual elements of your products, then it makes it very hard for us to actually show these properly in the search results. So for example, you mentioned you have handmade shoes.
If you have blue shoes and red shoes, and you never mentioned which color the shoes are in, then if someone is searching for blue shoes, we might think well, your pages are not that relevant, because you don’t mention the word blue anywhere on your pages.
So that’s kind of the angle I would take here is it’s fine to have parts or the description duplicated. But I would definitely make sure that you at least have something in there that really has text about the visual elements that are unique to those individual products that you’re selling. So that’s kind of the direction I would go.
