Google answers questions about duplicate content: Tips and solutions for site owners

Google's Search Central team, led by Martin Splitt, released a new video in the "SEO Made Easy" series. In this video, they take a detailed look at the issue of duplicate content on websites, which is a concern in the SEO community. They also provide practical solutions for site owners on this issue.

"Some people think it affects the perception of the site's quality, but it doesn't. It creates some challenges for website owners because it's harder to track the performance of duplicate pages." - Martin Splitt

🚀 However, Martin Splitt also points out that duplicate content can create several operational challenges that website owners should address. This, in particular, makes it difficult to track page performance, can lead to competition between similar pieces of content, and slows down crawl speeds, especially at scale.

• 📌 Use of canonical tags
• 📌 Use of internal links and forwarding
• 📌 Combining similar content

🚀 It's important to note that Google treats canonical tags as suggestions, not directives, they help guide the search engine's indexing decisions. When Google selects canonical URLs other than those specified, website owners should review and update their internal links to point to the desired canonical URLs. They should also consider using 301 redirects for external links. It is important to ensure that redirects are configured correctly to maintain site performance.