Copying Product Descriptions and Google Search penalties

[norbiu]

Will Google give me penalties if I copy the product description of certain gadgets? I'm talking about 2-3 sentences max.

[tedster]

The more your text duplicates what other sites have, the less you are differentiated to the algo -- so you simply run more chance of your page being filtered out of search results where it could be a relevant response. Do you call having your URL filtered out a penalty? It's not really a penalty, strictly speaking, but the result to your traffic flow might be just as painful.

The point of view you need to have, in my opinion, is this: "what can I do to be, clearly, a unique and useful result?"

[norbiu]

I did recently suffer a blow because of copying a few news articles from official websites. Traffic went down 40%. I deleted all the duplicate content and the traffic came back after almost a month.

I guess I'll write the descriptions down in my own words. That will probably take a while, but it will hopefully offer more relevant ads and higher positioning in search results, right?

[tsdpsg]

The more your text duplicates what other sites have, the less you are differentiated to the algo -- so you simply run more chance of your page being filtered out of search results where it could be a relevant response. Do you call having your URL filtered out a penalty? It's not really a penalty, strictly speaking, but the result to your traffic flow might be just as painful.
The point of view you need to have, in my opinion, is this: "what can I do to be, clearly, a unique and useful result?"

This quote is such a perfectly correct statement. Manufacturer's descriptions are there for you as a starting point for writing your own decsriptions.

If you don't care about organic rankings, then it doesn't matter. If you do care, then this should one of your core tenants of every product you carry.

[edited by: tedster at 2:07 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2006]
[edit reason] use quote box [/edit]