Quality content is the keyword in all things SEO – the first phrase Google turns to when it specifies what it’s looking for from high-ranking pages. The trouble is, quality isn’t something you can measure in numbers so – just like Google itself – we have to look at other factors to build up the picture of quality and how it affects search rankings.
Duplicate content and “fluff” are two things you definitely want to avoid on the path to quality content and Google is capable of detecting both of these. However, the dangers of duplicate content are highly debated and Google’s John Mueller recently talked up the dangers of “fluff”.
In this article, we clear up some of the misconceptions about these factors, discuss Google’s position and look at the evidence to determine how they really impact your search ranking.
Duplicate content vs fluff: What exactly are they?
Before we discuss the impact of duplicate content and fluff on your search ranking, let’s quickly clarify what these two terms mean.
What is duplicate content?
If we refer to the official documentation on the Google Search Central website, duplicate content is described as the following:
“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content in the same language or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.”
So, Google says you generally need to have multiple blocks of content that are exactly the same “or appreciably similar” to fall into duplicate content territory. The substantially similar part in that definition muddies the waters but evidence suggests that content needs to be almost identical or clearly reworded to raise any alarm bells.
The other important point in the definition above is that most duplicate content is not deceptive in origin.
In other words, it’s quite normal for websites to have duplicate content across pages or, even, have content on their pages duplicated on other sites. Google offers up some examples of how this can happen without any attempt to game the algorithm:
- Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
- Items in an online store that are shown or linked to by multiple distinct URLs
- Printer-only versions of web pages
On the same page, Google also states that some publishers deliberately duplicate content to try and manipulate search rankings.
In both cases, deceptive and non-deceptive duplicate content can impact your search ranking and we’ll discuss this particular point in more detail a little later in this article.
What is content fluff?
Content fluff is a little more difficult to define than duplicate content, purely because it’s a subjective quality. Also, there’s no official Google definition that we can lean on but that’s okay – we’re up to the task.
If we’re being really strict, fluff in content is anything that doesn’t need to be there but, in reality, all content includes the odd word that could be taken out. In strict editorial terms, unnecessary words would be removed from formal writing, but the conversational nature of web content means there’s space for adding some personality and tone.
From an SEO perspective, fluff refers to pages that include a lot of unnecessary and we can one of the key phrases from Google’s duplicate content definition here.
If you’ve got “substantive blocks” of unnecessary content on your pages, then you’re falling into the fluff trap.
Much like the unintentional duplicate content Google referred to in the previous section, some fluff can also naturally occur. However, once you start trying to fill pages rather than delivering what users need from your content as quickly as possible, you’re crossing that line into problematic fluff.
How do duplicate content and fluff affect your search ranking?
This is the more difficult question to answer because the impact of these factors on your search ranking depends on a lot of variables. In both cases, you can naturally develop a certain amount of duplicate content and fluff on your website so it’s not like you have to eradicate all traces of them.
However, it’s useful to understand how Google deals with both factors so let’s start by looking at the official documentation on duplicate content, once again, and comments from Google’s John Mueller on the topics of duplicate content, fluff and uniqueness.
How does duplicate content affect your search ranking?
The first thing to clarify about duplicate content is that you’re not going to get penalised by Google for natural duplication, such as the examples we looked at earlier:
- Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
- Items in an online store that are shown or linked to by multiple distinct URLs
- Printer-only versions of web pages
Google is capable of analysing occurrences of duplication to determine whether pages are trying to game the algorithm or not.
That being said, even naturally-occurring duplicate content can impact how your pages rank in search, due to the way Google filters information. If we go back to the official documentation on duplicate content from the Search Central website, Google explains how this works:
“This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a ‘regular’ and ‘printer’ version of each article, and neither of these is blocked with a noindex tag, we’ll choose one of them to list.”
So, even if you’re naturally or inadvertently creating duplicate content, you could still prevent certain pages from ranking. It’s not easy to control which page ranks in this scenario without using the rel=”canonical” element to specify the preferred page.
For some websites, indexing problems are relatively easy to avoid but things can get tricky if you have a lot of similar pages, such as an eCommerce website with a range of similar products (think a range of TV models from the same manufacturer).
As Google’s John Mueller has stated in the past, you’re not going to get penalised for having duplicate product descriptions but Google will have to choose which page to show. So a good strategy could be to optimise product category pages (eg: Sony TVs, 4K TVs, etc.) with unique content for users looking for a specific type of product. You can, then, let Google decide which specific product page to rank when users are searching for specific models, not product types.
When it comes to manipulative duplicate content, Google has a clear policy for dealing with this:
“In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.”
So the message is pretty clear: as long as you’re not trying to deceive Google, then you shouldn’t run into major issues with duplicate content – as long as you understand that Google needs to choose which page to rank when it detects duplicate or very similar pages.
How does fluff content affect your search ranking?
Fluff content is a more complex issue for Google, as John Mueller recently suggested on Twitter, in response to a question on the subject of duplicate content, no less. The thread John weighed into centred around the concern of duplicate content being overemphasised as a problem.
When Alan Bleiweiss argued that cases exist where duplicate content harms website rankings, John chipped suggested that what Alan was really talking about has more to do with fluff than duplicate content.
But that's less about duplicate content, and more about fluff. If you make it hard for search engines to figure out what you're trying to say, it's no wonder they don't recommend your pages for that.
— johnmu (official) — #StaplerLife (@JohnMu) January 7, 2022
John expands upon the issue by explaining that search engines like Google can struggle to understand the meaning of pages containing fluff because it reduces the clarity, making it more difficult to determine the intended meaning – both for search engines and users.
As John explains, “if you make it hard for search engines to figure out what you’re trying to say, it’s no wonder they don’t recommend your pages for that”.
Likewise, the more difficult you make it for users to extract the value from your content, the less likely they are to stay on your website and engage with your content. As a result, your engagement metrics suffer and this data confirms Google is right to rank other pages above the fluff.
Are you struggling with duplicate and fluff content?
If you’re having problems with managing duplicate content or producing quality fluff-free content, our marketing team can help. Call us on 0161 870 2580 to speak to us today or fill out the form on our contact page and we’ll get back to you.