Speaking on the SEO Office Hours podcast, Google’s Martin Splitt answered a question about whether reproducing YouTube video content in text on a webpage would be considered duplicate content and would hurt the ranking of the webpage.
While duplicate content is not a factor that negatively impacts rankings, content published on a more authoritative site can cause content on a less authoritative site to rank higher. This is a valid question, since content on a more authoritative site will rank higher than the same content on a less authoritative site.
Some in the search community refer to this situation, where one piece of content steals the rankings of another, as “cannibalizing” a web page’s ranking potential, which is what the questioner is concerned about.
Google’s Martin Splitt explained the question posed:
“If I create a YouTube video and then place the exact text or content from that video on a webpage, will Google likely flag that webpage or site as duplicate content?”
Different content media are treated differently
Martin Splitt responded that the two forms of content are different and therefore cannot be treated as the same content, and therefore publishing text content extracted from a video is not considered duplicate content.
His answer was:
“No, one is a video and the other is text content. This will be unique content.”
Publishing text extracted from videos
Martin praised the idea of extracting text content from videos and republishing it as text, noting that some people prefer consuming content in text form rather than watching video. Some people don’t like reading text content and prefer to listen to it in video or podcast format, so reversing the flow of content from text to audio or video is probably not a bad idea.
Commenting on releasing text versions of video content, Martin said:
“This isn’t a bad idea – some users (like me) may prefer a text version, and some users may have bandwidth or visual constraints that prevent them from using a video version of the content in the first place.”
summary
The idea behind this question is content reuse, and it’s a good idea. Search isn’t just on Google; it also includes YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere else people get their audio content. The fact that there’s no cannibalization of content across mediums makes reuse a viable approach to expanding your content reach.
Listen to the podcast at about 8 minutes and 20 seconds.
Featured image: Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi