Content and on-page SEO
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is the same or very similar content appearing at more than one URL, on your site or across sites. Search engines then have to choose which version to show.
Common causes
- URL variations: parameters, trailing slashes, www and non-www.
- Printer-friendly or filtered versions of pages.
- Near-identical location or industry pages with only a word changed.
- Content copied to other sites without a canonical tag.
How to handle it
Use canonical tags and redirects for technical duplicates, and make programmatic or industry pages genuinely different, with content specific to each. There is no penalty for accidental duplicates, but they waste ranking signals.
Frequently asked questions
Not for ordinary duplicates. Google filters them. Deliberately copying content to manipulate rankings is a different matter.
Yes. Publish on your site first, then share; where possible link back to the original.