Product descriptions

[Neo2008]

Hi

Im about to start listing a new line of product on my website, I am buying the products straight from the manufacture and they have told me I can use all there product photos and descriptions from there website, can anyone tell me would the search engines penalise my website for using the same descriptions as the manufacture which is already listed all there product pages on the search engines

Thanks

Kevin

[Neo2008]

The manufactures descriptions provide a lot of information and are well written, its seems a shame to mess with them really

[J-Wholesale]

Manufactures descriptions are written for retailers or wholesalers. Your descriptions should be written for consumers (if that's who you are selling to). The language used for the two is rarely the same.

[darren atkinson]

Hi,

You will not get penalised for using the same descriptions, but a search engine would most probably not choose to keep your product pages in it's index which will cut down drastically on your chances of picking up a diverse range of keyword rankings.

If you think about it logically, why would Google want to index more than 1 version of the same information? It does happen for larger / more established sites however for relatively new sites it's not going to bother with them.

The best practice would be to have them rewritten, focused on your customers like someone has already mentioned, and uniquely your own. It's often a long painfully dull task, but in the long run it's definitely worth it.

My strategy for this kind of issue on new sites is to start with the manufacturer ones to at least get up and running, then revisit them at a later date with a view to rewriting them. This also allows you to find out what products are best selllers then tackle them first.

Regards,

Darren

[Paul Norman]

We like to write our own descriptions, as we can then stamp our own style on them. Obviously, this is time consuming, but we believe worthwhile.

We are not primarily motivated by the SEO considerations in this, but by our customers. Plus, as stated above, the manufacturer descriptions are excellent, they are not really for end users.

My advice would be that presentation of your products on your site, including descriptions, are really vital, so the effort is worthwhile.

Using their pictures, however, is fine. We take our own, again for quality reasons, but it is not essential.