Duplicate Content Product Descriptions - how to tell if there's a penalty

[JoeHouse]

Hello

I am wondering how do you know if you are being penalized for duplicate content for product descriptions?

I have approximately 3000 items in which I use the manufacturers descriptions.

I believe I am being penalized because with the exception of the dup product description my website is perfectly optimized.

I have solid inbound links more than most and a good mix of anchor text for my hyperlinks.

The main keyword I am trying to obtain top ranking for has a weird pattern. It goes something like this.

I will rank for my main keyword at 165 on Monday then by Friday I am 881. A few days later I move back up to around 150 to 200 and then 3 or 4 days later back down to 800 plus.

This has been going on for months. What's the deal? I haven't made any changes that should reflect such a roller coaster ride.

I just can't figure it out. With the exception of the Dup product descriptions on my website which I also use on Amazon I cannot see what else might be doing this.

Any suggestions?

[tedster]

Do you mean that the on-page product descriptions are identical to the on-page descriptions at Amazon? That does sound like a recipe for trouble. Call it a penalty, or a filter, or whatever you want, Google doesn't want to show first page results for two urls that are essentially the same. Most people who do a search don't want that.

[JoeHouse]

Yes my content on my website and Amazon are exactly the same. I have a third party feed that pulls the info from my website and sends to Amazon.

What can I do to reverse this or make things better for my website? Should I discontinue Amazon? I do get quite a few sales from them but if its hurting me what should I do?

Also the content I am using is from my suppliers. They send out descriptions on the items and I use those descriptions.

With over 3000 items its difficult for one guy to handle everything.

Any advice?

[JoeHouse]

Has anybody experienced this?

[soxos]

Aside from Amazon is anyone else using the same content/ If it is manufacturing descriptions I assume you won't be the only one.

When it comes to dup content, google doesn't list the site where the content originates, but rather the site which is the most authorative.

If you are making much revenue though amazon, and no one else is using the content I would pull out of amazon for a month or two, to prove the fairly certain theory that you are suffering a dup content filter.

[bwnbwn]

This is a common problem with ecommerce sites I as well am suffering this. I don't believe it is amazon doing it as in my case there are many more websites with the same content.

I have found it much better to go after the bottom feeder(I call them)long tail keywords as they convert much much better than those Top feeder keywords.

Bottom feeder keywords keep you out of the spotlight and you just chug along like the CHo Cho train that could.

Keep Amazon going if it is working for you don't worry about the top keywords (top feeders) go after the long tail ones (Bottom feeders) as there really are the buyers anyway.

Top feeders eat the bandwith bottom feeders pay the bills.

[harjitsinghubhi]

I feel if the product description is re-written and emphasized more on the selling point of view, it should make some difference.
Another thing comes to my mind is about URL rewriting, which can further less down the trouble of duplicate content too.

[netmeg]

I don't have anyone using affiliate feeds, but I do have some client ecommerce sites with hundreds of products that have virtually the exact same description, the only difference being a size or a color or some such. What I try to do is optimize the heck out of the overall category descriptions, and let the products take care of themselves. If I can bring people in to the category pages, they'll find the products themselves.

Of course, that also means managing client expectations - they of course initially expected that all 10,000 of their pages should be indexed and ranking highly.

[MadeWillis]

Try rewriting your product descriptions to differ from the manufacturer and every other Joe who has used them, then only send Amazon a portion (500 characters or so) of that description. Obviously this could be difficult if your descriptions are short.