How Google’s Deduplication System Affects Search Results And Rankings

No one likes to have their web content duplicated and rankings taken away. But the thing is that it is happening. According to a study conducted by Raven Tools in 2015, 29% of the sites on the web face duplication content issues. We know that Google uses a wide variety of ranking signals to check the authenticity of a webpage and deduplication is one among them. What is deduplication? For short, it’s a tool whose primary purpose is enhancing search results by eliminating duplicate content. 

Every SEO professional and digital marketer must be aware of this fact as it allows you to optimize web content effectively. In this blog, you will understand more about it and learn the deduplication impact on search and website rankings, let’s get started.

Understanding What Is Deduplication

What is deduplication? Let’s first answer the obvious question. When multiple copies of the particular web page contents or URLs exist in search results, Google encounters duplication and it becomes difficult to rank. Due to this, the original web page may get lower than expected rankings, lower traffic, etc. 

This is where deduplication systems come into play. Deduplication is the process of removing duplicate content or URLs from display results. These systems improve search engines and provide cleaner and more relevant results to user queries. 

Now that you know what deduplication is, let’s learn how data deduplication works. When we search for information on Google, there will be millions of matching web pages and some of them might be very similar. 

Deduplication systems work by avoiding such pages thereby only showing relevant pages to the user. The same applies to featured snippets too. You can check out here to learn more about how deduplication works. So, in essence, the system essentially declutters duplicate results and provides people with relevant information more easily.

Analyzing The Types of Deduplication Systems

When it comes to web content duplication, they are of two types which are internal and external duplicate content. The former occurs when there are multiple URLs with the same or similar content on a website. This happens due to variations in URL parameters, session IDs, etc. 

However, the latter occurs when copies of the original web page content appear on different websites across different search domains. This results when other sites copy the original content for traffic manipulation, known as content scraping or through syndication, where the source content is intentionally republished across multiple sites. 

Internal deduplication arises when Google encounters variations of the same content on a website. As internal duplication confuses search engines, it makes it difficult to rank web pages. This impacts the site’s search rankings and user experience. External deduplication works by filtering out the duplicated web pages on external domains.

The Deduplication Impact On Ranking

Is duplicate content bad for SEO? Not necessarily, but it can certainly affect the website rankings if you are concerned. Having duplicate content impacts Google’s indexing and crawling process. Only quality and trustworthy pages are indexed by search engines and since duplicate contents don’t offer any value to the user, such pages are more likely to be avoided. So if you have been noticing a Google ranking suddenly dropped, it is important to check the possibility of duplicate content.

If duplicate content affects rankings, what about penalties for having them on your website or the deduplication impact on ranking? Some of you might think that. Well, we have good news for that. According to the search engine giant itself, there are no duplicate content penalties unless they are used to manipulate search engine results.

In other words, the algorithm and ranking system Google is smart enough to recognize websites that purposefully copy and republish the original content to manipulate rankings. Once duplicated content is encountered, the deduplication systems cluster the redundant contents, URLs, etc into a group and rank the best ones.

Addressing Internal & External Deduplication Challenges

Now that you are aware of what is deduplication the various types and the impact it has on SEO, let’s address the possible ways to deal with these challenges. Since duplication content can occur both internally and externally, we’ll be subdividing the steps for both below:

Internal Deduplication

Choose to delete or merge duplicate contents –  If you are looking for the simplest option, this is it. If your website has duplicate content, either merge them with the primary ones or delete them for good. Not only does this make the indexing a lot easier, but this also helps with the positive deduplication impact on ranking.

Implement canonical tags – As explained, when Google encounters duplicate content, it has difficulties in ranking. But what if the duplicate content pages have value and cannot be deleted? how does data deduplication work here? By implementing canonical tags in them that point to the main page. This effectively signals the search engine which page is the preferred one.

Analyze the website architecture – A website architecture has a vital role in crawling and indexing processes. The above processes mentioned work well but if your website has a high content volume, it’s wise to analyze the overall architecture.

External deduplication

When we perform a Google search, the search engine is designed to find and display the most relevant results for the user query. It can be yours but what if a competitor copies it and republishes it on their website? 

How will Google know which one is the original version? this can potentially reduce your content authority and result in the competitor’s copied version getting more traffic than yours. But you can keep that in check and increase deduplication impact on ranking.

Find out the content first – If you are sure your content has been duplicated, the first thing is to identify it by performing a manual search and looking for your keywords in the SERPs.

Get in touch with the competitor – Once you have found proof, you can reach out to the owner of the competitor’s website and request to take it down. You can file a DMCA takedown notice if they refuse to comply despite you providing the necessary evidence.

Winding Up

Understanding how data deduplication works and knowing the types of deduplication systems is crucial to ensure your website is cleared of duplicate content and no one else is taking advantage of your original content. Google’s deduplication systems ensure your web page contents are relevant and offer value to the users. The contents described above list the various deduplication strategies that you can check out for your website.

If you wish to learn more about this and find out if your website is facing content duplication, it’s time to consult with the professionals at GTECH, your most trusted SEO company in Dubai. Was this article helpful for you? Let us know your valuable feedback in the comments.