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Johannes Müller from Google took the horror of duplicate content. Duplicate content should not necessarily be problematic and can only be completely avoided in a few cases.
When dealing with SEO, you hear and read again and again that duplicate content must be avoided. It is said to be downright hated by Google and to cause massive damage to hard-earned rankings on a website. In one Google webmaster hangout Johannes Müller has now taken the horror of duplicate content on different URLs.
Duplicate content is rarely completely avoidable
Johannes Müller answered in the Google Webmaster Hangout the question of a user whether a category page counts as duplicate content if it is indexed on Google. He explained that if Google classified pages or parts of pages as duplicate content, it was not necessarily negative and would lead to the page being removed from the index. Rather, it is the case that every website has a certain amount of duplicate content and it is almost impossible to make each page unique. Google is also in a position to recognize which page best matches a search query. Duplicate content should therefore be unproblematic in most cases.
Unique content instead of duplicate content
The fact that duplicate content should be unproblematic in most cases is not a free ticket to randomly copy content for your own web project from external content. In the Google Webmaster Hangout, Müller referred to duplicate content within a web project. However, if identical content is available on different domains, Google will most likely promote the page in the rankings that the search engine believes is more relevant. Website operators should therefore only rely on unique content.
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