Duplicate title/description/h1 threshold?

[Tonearm]

Does anyone know where Google's threshold is as far as designating two or more titles, meta descriptions, or h1's as duplicates? What percentage of the words in these elements may match across two or more pages before Google considers them to be duplicates?

[Str82u]

Yes, exact is exact - duplicate is duplicate. I hate being an ass, but do you have pages so close in content that they would have duplicate titles but be different when read by a person? I'd think it's content that belonged on the same page then. Consider making next/previous if it's a long bit of textual content. Describe the content of the page honestly in the title and description, honestly to the user that might see those in the SERPs.

edit: Spelling, IE isn't helping.

[Tonearm]

You're saying Google won't consider two titles duplicates unless they mach 100%? I thought I had read differently.

As far as why some of my titles are so close, since all of my widgets are round and hairy, it's a matter of whether Google considers "Red Round Hairy Widgets" a duplicate of "Blue Round Hairy Widgets".

[jinxed]

Nobody knows exact thresholds. But this type of example is would typically create Panda issues if on a noticeable scale.

Have you had any traffic reductions after any Panda updates?

[Martin Ice Web]

Tonearm,

i do have the same problem. My widget is although a keyword much used in my niche. SO WMT counted this keyword over 150000 times for a 15.000 page big site. I decided to reduce this keyword/widget combination by using a replacement in this keyword. Still i am waiting for google to catch up with my changes.

Back to your question, I think many titles/description that are very close IS seen as DC. Next problem is, that the detail-page for the widget will not change much from widget to widget if it only changes the color.

If i take a close look at the serps, I find only sites in my niche that are not highly focused on my niche-theme. They do only have ony one or two of this widgets. All my competitors that are highly focused and do have some more of the same widgets but different typs are gone.

[lucy24]

If they are all round and hairy, do the words need to be in the title at all?

Answer: Yes, they probably do, precisely for search reasons. "I don't just want green widgets, I want round hairy green widgets." Would google be happier if you left the words out of the title but kept them in the meta description-- which should also show up in searches? A description is longer, so it's easier to camouflage the recurring words.

This is assuming your site name isn't round-hairy-widgets.com, because then the problem would go away.

[Str82u]

The only duplicates I have in WMT are exact duplicates. 100% matches. They occur mostly with multi page search results from site-search. The fix was marking the pages "Search Results For Widget (page 1)", "Search Results For Widget (page 2)", etc.

[tedster]

Nobody knows exact thresholds

It might not be an exact number - Google's semantic engine could play into the picture, too. If smaller connecting words are different but all the big, important words are the same or maybe just synonyms, then that still might be a duplicate. We do know that is how page content works.

[matrix_jan]

Changing one letter in the title will take the duplicate warning off WMT's HTML suggestions. If you're worried about what happens behind the curtain, then nobody knows for sure.

[Martin Ice Web]

@matrix,

thatīs true, but what about the widgets-pages itself? Because of the slight difference in the description of the widget (red instead of blue) it is better to set the widget-pages to noindex?!

[Tonearm]

Has anyone had success with maybe 66% or 75% word duplication?

[Martin Ice Web]

OK, i did some reasearch on a domain that now is dominating the serps in my niche. Thias domain has not been around before panda/penguin and had a very big push through penguin.

In relation to this thread, this this uses the very same title on 1-20 pages for each widget with color / lenght / articlenumber changing. All other html/onsite is similar.
The very best is, that this site is the total duplicate from another domain, with exact pagename, filename, picture- name, tag, filename ) , description, h1, title...
It now ranks depending on search between #1 - #10.

This guy does NOT use WMT! This guy does not care about DC! Is penguin not sensitive for domains not using WMT?

edit: Forget to say, both domains are in google index.

[1script]

@Martin Ice Web: you are describing a very interesting case.

It sounds like the old domain #1 got slapped by Penguin (or was it Panda, which version then?) and the owner had decided to just move to another domain #2, the one that's now dominating the SERPs. The interesting twist is that they did not kill off the original domain #1 (i.e. 301 everything to #2) when the #2 went online, which is usually the case. You would think duplication would hold #2 back because it's younger but it does not appear to be much of a detriment. Neither is the internal duplication within the domain #2. This is quite remarkable.

Are there any redirects between #1 and #2? Are they owned by the same entity (as in same ad affiliate ID, or same whois)?

[Martin Ice Web]

@1script,

he is not running any ads on the domains, who is gives same owner but different locations ( street, town ).
Now redirects or 301s. He is running both domains. Itīs complete DC. The two domains are connected over a third domain.

[1script]

The two domains are connected over a third domain.

Oh, boy! It gets even more interesting ... What's the nature of the connection to #3?

Also, did you mean to say that there are no redirects from #1 to #2 ?

How about #3?

Thanks!

[matrix_jan]

@Martin Ice Web

I look it this way. If the pages have the same title then users will not be able to differentiate them. As long as the content is different (even slightly) and the titles are different and meanwhile they provide some idea what the content is about, then you'll have no problems. Say you have two widgets, one is blue and one is red. Jackie Chan searches for the red one and your page appears in the search results, while Chuck Norris searches for the blue one and lands on your page from the search resutls. I don't see any cheating here. Many products that have only one character difference in their names are completely different, say 10 Megapixel camera and 20 Megapixel camera... Just make sure to have the content and titles matched, in other words don't put widgets in two identical pages with one having blue widgets and the other red in the title.

[Martin Ice Web]

@script,

#1 and #2 pointing to #3. #3 is pointing to #1.
The slight difference between the two domains is that #1 uses a little bit longe navigation than #1.

@matrix_jan.

I didnīt say itīs cheating, I only say that having a page on two domains with only a slight difference in html, but having title, filename, description same will NOT cause duplicate content.

In other words, having blue widgets and red widgets in two identical pages is not DC, if itīs on same domain or different does not matter.

I donīt know up to now how he is doing it, but he is #1 for many terms.

edit: the pages need about 2 seconds to load! If pagespeed is a ranking factor, in this case it slipped through.