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I would like to hide some content from Google.

Because a client has multiple websites with the same content then he gets a warning about duplicate content on some of them (multiple countries, same products same description for the products). I tried loading the content of the page with Ajax after the page has loaded but Google still sees it (hence the warning about duplicate content). Is there a better way to do this with Ajax? Can I run somehow the AJAX that loads the result after the page has loaded in a way that is not executed by Google. I would like to avoid any Black Hat if possible (I fully understand that this can be considered black hat too).

I have also tried converting the text to images, that works decently but the text is not crisp enough even with AA enabled.

I understand the Iframe trick too, but I want to get to it only if AJAX is not possible.

Did anybody try putting functionality in an external JS file, not allowing google bot from indexing it and putting a function that loads AJAX in there externally?

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    The best answer is to avoid duplicate content. Do not be surprised if any answers take this stance.
    – closetnoc
    May 13 '14 at 5:41
  • As @closetnoc says -- also, it is a bad idea to try to hide stuff from Google and display it for the users and vise versa. You should always display the same content to users and bots.
    – Traven
    May 13 '14 at 5:46
  • I know that the best way to avoid duplicate content is to write unique content :) I keep telling that to my client. But he keeps insisting to find a solution. I have tried some solutions but Ajax looks like the most logical of them all. I was just surprised that Google indexed it and I found out that it started running Javascript some months ago. I realize that this could be interpreted as Black Hat SEO.
    – Mihai P.
    May 13 '14 at 6:01
  • I used to be a consultant in the IT industry and specialized in the telecom industry. But not all of my time could be filled with teleco work, so I had other customers too. Along the way, I would find a customer that insisted that I do work against my recommendation. I would always double-down on my insistence and refuse to do the wrong thing. I might pi$$ off one looney-tune, but win the war by having an outstanding reputation that got me to the Whitehouse. Yup. I got a call from the big kahuna. He heard of my work first hand and called. Freaked me out! Did that really happen? Yes it did.
    – closetnoc
    May 13 '14 at 6:29
  • Well, I already have a similar story with this particular customer. But I need the money until my company takes off.
    – Mihai P.
    May 13 '14 at 8:13
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Not all duplicate content is considered "bad" or "wrong" and not all of it is penalized by search engines. There is an in depth answer about that aspect at: What is duplicate content and how can I avoid being penalized for it on my site?

You mention that one reason that the content is duplicated is because the same products are sold in multiple countries on different websites. This is one area in which Google actually rewards duplicate content. To get the benefits you would need to "geotarget" each site to the country in which it is selling the products. If you own top level country code domains such as example.co.uk, your site will already be targeted to the UK from Google's perspective. If your site is on a generic top level domain such as .com, you will need to register the site in Google Webmaster Tools and set the geo target. If each site is targeted to a different country, then there is no problem with duplicating the contents. You can even have one of the sites as a global site to catch any place that you don't otherwise have a specific site to target.

If you still want to hide some of the content from Google, you can do it with AJAX. Google will not crawl the content if is blocked by robots.txt. So you can load your content into the page with code like $.ajax({url:"/syndicated/content_xyz",success:function(result){... as long as you make sure that robots.txt has this: Disallow: /syndicated

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  • Thank you, I will try that. The problem is that it is across countries and sometimes across parts of a country (so multiple domains are with .com.au for example). I will try the robots.txt option.
    – Mihai P.
    May 13 '14 at 12:38

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