Privacy Pages And Duplicate Content
I've seen lots of people asking this question before, I asked it myself quite recently too.
Does using privacy policy (and other 'terms and conditions' type sites) count as duplicate content?
Most people use templates for their privacy policies and just edit the site names and email addresses here and there, so it is a legitimate concern.
I've seen various answers too..some of them make more sense than others, but none of them are actually correct.
Answer one: "No..it doesn't count as duplicate content because it is a page" - Not quite sure where the logic in that one came from. Pages can count as duplicate.
Answer two: "You should set the page to <noindex> and <nofollow> to avoid that." - This one appears to make sense, but to me it is illogical.
1.)Why would you NOT want Google to see that you have a Privacy Policy page? It loves privacy pages because it makes your site more legit, and in many places it is required.
2.) Google can pretty much choose to ignore <nofollow> and <noindex>. Do you think if you have something dodgy on your site that you don't want them to find, they are going to be stopped by a <noindex> <nofollow> page?
Sorry Officer, you can't go into that room. There's nothing there anyway. Definitely not a dead body.
So, rant aside. Here's the correct answer.
It doesn't count as duplicate content, because Google understands that webmasters create privacy policies using templates.
Many companies have terms and conditions pages that apply to multiple offers, so even if they have them written custom, they are gonna be duplicate.
Google knows people need to have legal disclaimers and text all across the Internet, and it is smart enough to recognize this type of text.
If you aren't sure that you believe me, it's cool. I come with proof from the man himself. Mr Matt "Google" Cutts.
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Who's this Clicky fellow? LOL.
Well said Dom, Google does get that Privacy pages are all going to be quite similar in nature and they are not there to add value to the audience nor add relevant information to the respective theme of their websites.
Google is smarter than most people give them credit for.
Thanks for that Dom. I too have heard the silly suggestion to re-write the privacy policy and disclaimer. Apart from this being a waste of time, you'd really need to have some legal knowledge in order to do this safely.
Thanks for the info Dom. I've got noindex and nofollow ticked. I'm in the getting started training section, and tagging along with what Kyle says. The privacy policy I've used, is the same as the other 50k or so people going through WA (bar my domain name). So google can check it out if they want. Id re-write some of it if I could, but since I don't understand the half of it, I'm going to leave it for the mo. Roll on, oh sunny days, of understanding all this computer "webby stuff" terminology :)
i think before it was a case of "better safe than sorry" but since Matt Cutts confirmed it is fine, it's fine
Thanks for posting some awesome info, I always try to be at my very best when the "google spiders" comes along and even re-write the policy - this will save some valuable time.
Keep up the good work and have a great day.
While that makes a lot of sense, personally I think it can't hurt to exclude the page using robots.txt. 1) Google may think it's okay but Google is not the only search engine. 2) Google has a nasty way of changing policy faster than most of us change our underwear. What is okay now may not be okay tomorrow. And yes, I did change my underwear today and plan to do so tomorrow!
Best Regards,
Jim
Fair point, so it's personal choice that governs it in the end. I would add that yahoo and bing mostly follow google policy in the end. I think if you search for amazon + privacy policy in yahoo, you'll find it.
Again, search engines can ignore robots.txt
You are rit that they like to change policy at the drop of a hat though. I can't see any reason why they would ever go after something that regular webmasters need to include though.
Yeah, the cop thing has never worked with me, I'm such a bad liar. Good points, Dom and well worth everyone's time to read.
you just have to double bluff him. Really the dead body was under the bed in the room you were already standing in.
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Thanks for the post Dom very informative.
glad to help.