Ok to Put Same Info on Different Categories In Your Site?

Is it okay to add the same information on different categories in your site

[racheljoshua]

Hi all. I have a very large directory about design. I separate each category under different folders...such as

design > clipart > free clipart

if I have another category within this site such as

webdesign > clipart > free clipart

Can I use the same clipart document to go under both webdesign and design or is that counted as duplicate content?

If anybody knows the answer...please let me know.

Tank you.

[beggers]

Well, it used to be that you designed sites to make it convenient and useful for the reader. As far as I can tell, convenience and usefulness are not factored into ranking. Now we just design for SEs.

[FattyB]

I do this a bit. I might have news on X listed on one page. Then also have a topic page that lists news on Y from X&Z, etc.

But I don't actually publish the articles twice, just the snippets appear on more than one page.

Certainly not something I would change for SEO reasons as handy for users. I would go with what makes your site useful to users...as much as is possible without stepping on the various landmines that seem to be appearing.

[racheljoshua]

Thank you both. I agree with you that I should be designing my site to be useful. I have been running sites since the middle 90s and it bothers me that I even have to think about whether I am 'allowed' to duplicate a page or design my site in a certain way. My main purpose is to make the site useful for my users, but I get 90 percent of my traffic from Google, so I don't want to mess anything up my traffic by getting penalized for duplicate content either.

[europeforvisitors]

Can I use the same clipart document to go under both webdesign and design or is that counted as duplicate content?

Why not just link to the document from your two different menus? There shouldn't be any need to have the same content on two different pages.

Side note: It's hardly fair to criticize a search engine for recognizing that hypertext linking, not cloning, is the most fundamental principle of the World Wide Web.

[racheljoshua]

Thanks. I didn't mean to sound critical...I love Google...I use it constantly. I just don't like having to think about how I design my page for anything other than usability reasons.

I would prefer not to just link to it, because I use a linking structure header on the top of every page ....

for example

Home > Web Design > Graphics > Clipart > Free Clipart

If the user is in 'Free Clipart' , they can get back to clipart or graphics or web design by just clicking on that link. However, If I am in the web design section and I just link to the graphic design 'free clipart' page then the user will be in the graphic design section and the top header links will look like this instead

Home > Graphic Design > Graphics > Clipart > Free Clipart

Now the user isn't in the web design section anymore and he or she will be in the wrong section if they click back for previous pages.

Does this make sense?

Thanks...

[andrea99]

I have precisely this problem as well and it does bother me a lot that I may have to make my site less useful to visitors in order to GET visitors.

If the General Widget Chain Store sells Top Widgets and Underwidgets I want to describe this store on my Top Widget Page and on my Underwidget page, my database is set up this way and it is very useful to the visitor.

All this "Widget" stuff is ridiculous too, I want a world without stupid rules.

[jk3210]

<<or is that counted as duplicate content?>>

Duplicate. Google will PRZero (or is it gray-bar?) one of the pages. You can still set your site up that way if you want to, it's just that one of the pages will get nailed.

[europeforvisitors]

I would prefer not to just link to it, because I use a linking structure header on the top of every page ....

OK, you said it was a clip-art document, in which case the real content (from your point of view and the user's) is likely to be the clip art. Could you simply rewrite the accompanying text in one version of the clip-art page? That way, everybody gets what they want: You, the user, and Google.

[racheljoshua]

Dear Europe. Thank you for your post. If I understand you correctly, you mean just re-write out the linking text on the top (switch out the home>graphic design>blah blah with the home>web design>blah blah)

This is what I wanted to do all along. Google is okay with this? Having 2 separate pages that are exactly the same, except for the header text?

Thanks...Rachel

[Brian]

I think it's fine, and I don't think any of your pages will be PR zeroed. What will happen, in my experience, is that duplicates will be recognised as "similar", suppressed from the main listing for your site and assigned a low, neligible or even possible nonexistent PR.

What proportion of similarity between two pages will trigger this is something that endlessly baffles me.

In short, such duplication will do you no harm, but it may not help you much from a Google point of view.

[caveman]

> such duplication will do you no harm

That is not necessarily true anymore, IMO. Mirroring one directory within a large site is probably fine, resulting in just one set of pages being discounted.

However, the more repetition there is within the site, the greater the risk that site wide issues will emerge. For now anyway.

[europeforvisitors]

If I understand you correctly, you mean just re-write out the linking text on the top (switch out the home>graphic design>blah blah with the home>web design>blah blah)

The anchor text, you mean? No, I meant the text on the page itself: i.e., the title, meta description, and any text that accompanies the images. That's what Google is crawling and indexing.