Duplicate content occurs when the same or very similar text exists on multiple URLs — either on the same site or on different sites — confusing Google about which version to rank.
Duplicate content exists when substantial blocks of identical or very similar text appear at multiple web addresses. Internal types: paginated category pages (page/2, page/3), product filters with the same content, parameter URLs (product?sort=price), http vs https or www vs non-www versions. External types: content copied from other sites or distributed across several of your own domains without canonicalization. Google tries to pick a canonical version — and may choose wrong.
Internal duplicate content dilutes ranking authority across versions instead of consolidating it. Externally, copied content can be penalized. The solution: correctly configured canonical tags, 301 redirects and creating unique content per page.
Source: Google Search Central — Duplicate ContentThe canonical tag (rel="canonical") tells Google which is the main version of a page when similar or duplicate URLs exist, preventing duplicate-content penalties.
Technical SEO covers the optimizations of your site's infrastructure — crawlability, indexing, loading speed, HTTPS and data structure — that let Google find and understand your pages.
Robots.txt is a text file placed at the root of a site that tells crawlers (Google, Bing, GPTBot) which pages they may or may not access and index.
Crawlability is the ability of Google's robots to access, navigate and read your site's pages — an essential prerequisite for indexing and ranking.
Explore how to apply this concept to your industry and city.