Duplicate content on travel websites
If your website has duplicate content you may be penalised by Google and other search engines. Identifying the problem – and fixing it – can be difficult.
Duplicate content can appear on your own website, or on another website (either with or without your permission).
Why is duplicate content a problem? Because Google and other search engines try to avoid cluttering their results pages with the same slab of text repeated over and over. To do this, they decide which version is the most authoritative.
Google looks at a number of factors including the age of the site and the number of pages linking to it. If Google thinks you have copied large parts of the content of your site from elsewhere, it may be reluctant to return your pages in its results.
But which is the original?
Multiple domains
Some sites are published under two or more URLs, perhaps for historical reasons or because the owners mistakenly believe this will bring them more traffic. They may, for instance, have www.example.com and www.example.co.uk running side by side.
If you’re doing this, your online performance will be suffering. Decide which is your primary domain and set up a 301 (permanent) redirect to it from the secondary domain. Google says it will carry over the authority accrued by the secondary domain to the primary one.
Some travel websites repeat content across a number of pages. For instance, hotel or resort descriptions may be duplicated many times. This should be fixed by attaching “noindex” tags to duplicate pages, telling search engines not to list them.
Copyright infringement
A far more difficult problem occurs when content is used on other sites. This is common in travel, where online travel agents cut and paste property descriptions or holiday itineraries. The owner of the original website may be reluctant to make waves because it fears losing business.
However, any potential loss of business must be set against the damage this duplicate content may be causing to the original site. I have seen cases in travel where Google regards the copying site as more important and delists the original site. The effect can be highly damaging.
Business owners need to understand the high commercial value of their own original website content, and protect it. They should make clear at the outset that they will not accept copyright infringement.
How to rein in offenders? You could ask the site to link back to your page, although this might be commercially unrealistic. Other options include asking the offending site to substantially rewrite your content.
You can also ask the site’s webmaster to add “noindex” tags to the pages, so that search engines ignore them. If that fails, call in the lawyers.
Article last updated: July 9, 2008
