Does duplicated content in disclaimer and terms & conditions pages affect search results?
Posted on: February 8, 2015
Website owners are aware that duplicated content can affects their SEO ranking. It is not surprising companies who offer the same products or services may have content that are similar to other websites. A common duplicated content pages will be the disclaimer and terms & conditions page. This is the reason why the following question arise.
Video Question
“How does duplicate copy that’s legally required (i.e. Terms and Conditions across multiple offers) affect performance in search?”
Matt Cutts, the head of the Google Spam Search department, provided the following points in response to this concern:
Highlights of the Video:
- He mentioned that web owners and managers should not be too concerned about this matter. Unless, the content that the website has is considered to be spammy or keyword stuffing, or anything that is related to violations committed against Google’s Webmaster Tools guidelines and regulations.
- And in case the site’s contents have been proven to contain spam or is in violation of the keyword stuffing rules, then an algorithm or an authorized person from his team may take action on this particular concern or issue.
- Google also understands that lots of websites across the World Wide Web have similar disclaimers, terms and conditions, legal information featured on their websites as part of protection.
- In regards to SEO, this should not affect your website’s overall ranking and search results.
In order to get better results on Search Engine Results Page (SERP), you should:
- Do not get affected by the similar disclaimer and terms & conditions content in your page. It is only 2 pages of your entire website. If your website have 100 pages of original content, 2 pages is only 2% of your website.
- If you need to have a write up of terms & conditions for every of your products/services page, remember to add in more original content to dilute the copied content.
- Always create relevant and original content on your site. Remember that the original content in a website will keep your followers coming back and win over new followers.
