Duplication
Pages that say the same thing twice — by fingerprint, and by meaning.
Near-duplicate content
These pages are so alike that Google sees one piece of content under many addresses. They are nearly identical: the same description with a different town name, the same product in red and in blue, the same article under a new title. Instead of one strong page you have several weak ones competing for the same search, and Google picks which to show, sometimes one you would never have chosen. What usually hides here: town pages generated from a template, product variants as separate addresses, and categories that differ only in sort order. Decide which is the original: merge the rest into it with a canonical, redirect them, or give them content that truly exists nowhere else.
- Id
- NEAR_DUPLICATE_CONTENT
- Fires at
- ≥ 95 %
- Fix estimate
- 20 min per page
The same product answers under several category paths
Give the product one address, ideally without the category in it, 301 the other paths to it and link to that one from every category. A canonical alone leaves every path to be crawled.
The same product has several addresses, one for each category it appears in. Convenient for the reader, but to Google it is three or four pages with identical content, splitting the links between them and competing for the same query. Usually it is a shop setting that builds the product address from the category path. There are two fixes: one permanent product address independent of the category, or a canonical on every variant naming one main one. The first is cleaner, the second quicker.
- Id
- PRODUCT_MULTIPLE_PATHS
- Fix estimate
- 10 min per page
Semantically duplicate content
These pages say the same thing in different words. The text differs, but the topic, the intent and the answer are the same: two "how to choose a mattress" articles written a year apart, a guide and an FAQ on the same subject, two service pages for neighbouring towns. Google sees them as rivals for one place in the results and rotates between them, so neither takes root. This finding rests on a similarity measure, so read both pages first. If they really answer the same question, merge them into one stronger page and redirect the weaker.
- Id
- SEMANTIC_DUPLICATE
- Fix estimate
- 20 min per page