Could a generated TOS affect SEO?

dmxsta

Regular Member

Jun 29, 2013

417

152

• Jun 11, 2014

• #1

Hi,
I've found a website where you can generate your own TOS, but I was wondering if this could affect my website because the duplicate content?
Could it lower my google ranking if they see I've used duplicate content?

Thanks

 

Techxan

Elite Member

Dec 7, 2011

3,091

3,620

• Jun 11, 2014

• #2

no index it .

 

the_demon

Elite Member

Nov 23, 2008

3,220

1,604

• Jun 11, 2014

• #3

No, it won't hurt you. Pretty sure Google is well aware of plugins that generate it. I mean a huge percent of the web is using the same exact template from a handful of wordpress plugins. Personally I always No Index that page anyways, otherwise Google tends to be stupid and rank it above the home page for some reason.

 

meln

Junior Member

Jan 13, 2007

192

52

• Jun 11, 2014

• #4

Yeah definitely set noindex, or just block it in robots.txt. There's absolutely no reason for Google to index a TOS anyway. I've done just like you on many, many sites and noindexed the TOS, no problem.

 

M

Mindanao

BANNED

Jun 12, 2011

397

76

• Jun 11, 2014

• #5

Of course not. Google is smart enough.

 

Automated

Regular Member

Jun 7, 2012

290

125

• Jun 11, 2014

• #6

Yeah, just set it to not be indexed. Like others said, it shouldn't hurt you by means of dupe content, but it will possibly out rank certain pages which you don't want.

 

Z

Zso

BANNED

Nov 18, 2007

497

914

• Jun 11, 2014

• #7

Duplicate content is a problem when it's indexed in Google, so just put rel no index on it.

 

BotCoder

Junior Member

Jan 12, 2014

119

328

• Jun 11, 2014

• #8

Well I guess I'll repeat what everyone else has already said. Open your control panel, go to file manager, locate robots.txt and add a line something like this,

Disallow: /TOS/

 

dmxsta

Regular Member

Jun 29, 2013

417

152

• Jun 12, 2014
• Thread Starter Thread Starter

• #9

Okay thanks for the help guys, really appreciate it!

 

irdeto

Regular Member

Mar 18, 2010

391

164

• Jun 12, 2014

• #10

dmxsta said:

Hi,
I've found a website where you can generate your own TOS, but I was wondering if this could affect my website because the duplicate content?
Could it lower my google ranking if they see I've used duplicate content?

Thanks

Click to expand...

whether you index or not index the TOS page it will make no difference.
Google sees it as a trust signal and mostly ignores these as they are very common.

I wouldnt worry too much about it. I use them all the time.

 

winosergio

BANNED

Mar 26, 2012

274

84

• Jun 12, 2014

• #11

I dont think G algo is so sensitive. Dont know if it is well said like that, but I mean, if your whole website is original content and just a 0,1% of that content would be duplicated, dont think you would be penalized.

 

InvoiceLABs

BANNED

Jul 31, 2013

222

32

• Jun 13, 2014

• #12

Set it as noindex to be 100% safe. A TOS doesn't increase your rankings anyways.

 

SPQR

Elite Member

May 15, 2013

1,874

1,076

• Jun 13, 2014

• #13

Google tends to be a bit smarter than most people think.