Can product descriptions be considered duplicate content?

Mani from Delhi asks:

"Are product description pages on an e-commerce site termed as duplicate content if the same product description appears on other sites? It does happen for many branded products."

Recorded on April 23, 2009.

[BIGELLOW]

This answers the question if this is about affiliates. However, a lot of times a product description is provided by the manufacturer. A company who actually stocks and ships thousands products (such as Legos) may often use the manufacturer's description. The "value" that is being provided is selling the product at a great cost, NOT in being able to write a better product description than the manufacturer.

[DavidOgletree]

That is just an odd video. White shirt white background. Looks like it is from heaven.

[JustBenInLA]

Agree with you 100% what a waste of time this is going to be for most retailers rewriting manufacturers product descriptions. And even then they have to be different enough not to trigger the duplicate content filter.

[JustBenInLA]

Unfortunately google doesn't care if you try and add value by creating reviews or adding additional content to a product description. If the description is to similar to to some other prescription out there they're now filtering your product pages.

[tigoes]

I have a website proposing apartment rental for short term, each apartment has its 2 paragraph description etc...

Now i want to build the apartment main page containing links to each of them and would like to include for example first 2 phrases of each of the desctiptions on the main apartment page.

Even if i use structured data and indicate its the product description, will this be considered a duplicate content? I guess its better to write small description for each (200) of them

[amitghare]

what about internal pages having same product description. 400+ words product description.

[tonylexus]

This video talks more about duplicate content via affiliate marketing and syndicate feeds, so I don't think he answered the question: Do branded product descriptions classify as duplicate content?

[amitghare]

Can any one tell me about internal website duplicate content.
If same product added in various categories the does google count as duplicate content. Product description is more than 400 words in each category.

Does it affect ranking.

[tonylexus]

Is it penalized by Google's ranking algorithm?

[iwasrobot]

Even with a static product description you can help users by providing space for comments, reviews or user interactions. This will not only differentiate your site; you can also enhance your user experience.

You not understanding this and penalizing the web with another cloned site is lazy.

[MyRedbubbleStore]

I wouldn't trust this service because someone that showed me this website was selling me SEO service for about 8, 000 but I think do your homework.

[MarkusDiersbock]

This is a horrible answer. Many times the manufacturer requires the product description by the same for every site that sells their products.

By Google not understanding this and giving a site a penalty is lazy.

[alexbachynskyi]

See at google.com/shopping and see how they write unique content on each product :)