Webmasters have long been told to never create duplicate content. But what about necessary duplicate content, such as privacy policies and other required legalese that websites are required to carry? Google's Matt Cutts says don't stress about it.
Webmasters have long been told to never ever create duplicate content for a website if you want your website and pages to rank well in Google. Google automatically filters out to the content results, and can even lower rankings of sites that are primarily duplicate content.
But what about necessary duplicate content on websites, such as privacy policies, terms and conditions and other required legalese that websites are required to carry?
Good news for webmasters, this type of content you don’t generally need to worry about. In a Google Webmaster Help video, Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts tackled the issue and said unless you’re doing something spammy like keyword stuffing within the legal verbiage, you really have nothing to worry about.
“We do understand a lot of different places across the web require various disclaimers, legal information, and terms and conditions, that sort of stuff, so it’s the sort of thing where if we do not to rank that stuff well that would hurt our overall search quality,” Cutts said. “So I wouldn’t stress out about that.”
And even if these types of pages are duplicated out of the search index, generally people don’t want their terms and conditions pages necessarily indexed in Google anyway, they just need to have it on their website so that users can access it from a website.
More about:
The Merkle B2B 2023 Superpowers Index outlines what drives competitive advantage within the business culture and subcultures that are critical to success. It is the indispensable guide for B2B marketers to deliver world-class experiences and keep pace with the dynamic environment. Download Now
The ClicData survey found that various challenges exist that prevent organizations from achieving such gains. These challenges included inaccessible data formats and limited flexibility in displaying data in dashboards. Download Now
The need for fraud prevention in the digital world is critical now more than ever. Why? Thinking about your own behavior, consider how you complete transactions and how this has changed over the last 5 years. Download Now
The need for fraud prevention in the digital world is critical now more than ever. Why? Thinking about your own behavior, consider how you complete transactions and how this has changed over the last 5 years. Download Now