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Users of our product have been posting reviews to an external review site. I'd like to duplicate those reviews on our main customer review/testimonial page because external reviews have a habit of disappearing.

On our site each review appears on a paginated list AND has it's own dedicated page. Obviously the content for those few reviews is going to be largely duplicated, is it best to noindex the duplicated review page on our site, or will a few duplicated reviews among hundreds be nothing to worry about?

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  • There shouldn't be any reason why you would need to noindex the page unless we are talking about hundreds of pages, hundreds of reviews are fine but best you use <blockquote> with <cite> to the source. You can find more information about Blockquote on HTML5 doctor.
    – Simon Hayter
    Dec 16, 2014 at 0:28
  • I am using a WP plugin to manage the reviews (there's hundreds of them). The HTML on the review lists looks like they are using <blockquote> (as well as a bunch of <meta itemprop> fields) but the individual review pages are not. BTW the first part of your comment is really an answer......
    – nemmy
    Dec 16, 2014 at 0:52
  • I would imagine that a few here and there could not hurt especially when credit is given. Where I am not sure I would go is, if using the plug-in would make the reviews appear as though they originated on your site when they did not. I would keep the reviews as testimonials and I would consider some mark-up, but say, using a plug-in that is designed for user leaving reviews on your site might not be wise. I am not saying it would be a problem; I am saying that is not the route I would go.
    – closetnoc
    Dec 16, 2014 at 4:28
  • The plugin is just used to manage the list of testimonials and their content. Customers cannot leave testimonials on our site directly.
    – nemmy
    Dec 16, 2014 at 8:08

2 Answers 2

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Yes, obviously as you duplicate your customer testimonials on your website, it make some sense for new customer reading these content. It's better to leave it there only, because you will get normal link from another website which is very much liked and considered by Google for indexing your website.

You can also alter or rewrite your customer feedback and put it in your website rather than updating with the same content from another website.

"I love to have discussed on another website rather than in my own one..."

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Not all duplicate content will cause problems for your site. Using content from other places with permissions is called "content syndication". The syndicated content won't help your site rank better, but having some syndicated content won't hurt your SEO and can be great for users. See What is duplicate content and how can I avoid being penalized for it on my site?

It would be OK to use some reviews from other sites as long as:

  • You have permission to use those reviews
  • You include a link to the source of the review (not just the homepage from where it is from, but a deep link to the page with the review)
  • It is a small portion (not more than 20%) of the content on your site.

If you block the pages with the duplication from Google using robots.txt then Google will have no way of even knowing that you are using syndicated content.

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