The myth about duplicate content penalties has been around for years. Google wants a variety of search results and must choose when two or more pages are the same or similar, causing other pages to lose organic traffic. This is different from a penalty.
Google’s “Search Central” blog says: Ranking system guide Let’s talk about deduplication.
When you search on Google, you can find thousands or even millions of matching web pages. Some of these are very similar to each other. In these cases, our system only displays the most relevant results to avoid useless duplication.
Not mentioned in the guide yet how The deduplication system selects the page. In my experience, duplication occurs in four ways.
Similar pages
If your site has similar product or category pages, or Syndicate your content (Whether you know it or not), Google may show only one page in search results. This is not a penalty, but it reduces traffic between identical pages. So make sure Google ranks original, up-to-date, detailed, and relevant pages (not syndicated or scraped versions).
Canonical tags and 301 redirects You can show Google which pages are best for you. Neither is certain, as Google considers them suggestions. The only way to force optimal page creation is to avoid page duplication.
The danger of duplicate content arises when a third-party scraped version outperforms the original. Google can usually identify scraped content. This is usually found on low-quality sites with little or no content. authority signal. Therefore, a higher scraped version means there is a problem with the original site.
Featured snippets
Featured snippets Appear above organic search results and get quick answers to your queries. Google removes organic snippet URLs from lower organic positions to avoid duplication.
The purpose of featured snippets is to eliminate the need for clicks and answer queries. Therefore, your Featured Snippets page is likely to receive less organic traffic, and there’s no surefire way to prevent it. If your page suddenly loses traffic, check to see if your page is featured in Search Console.
Google is likely to do deduplication AI overview In the same way.
Top articles
“Top articles” is a separate search results section for breaking or related news. Top article URLs usually lose their natural position.
domain
Domain names create many other types of duplication besides content. Google usually doesn’t show the same domain in top results. Inquiries regarding brand name. Keep an eye on the queries for your brand to understand what other domains are ranking for your brand and how to combat them.
