What's a practical duplicate-content audit for a large store?

What's a practical duplicate-content audit for a large store?

'Q: I suspect duplicate content but my site has 50k products. How do I find it systematically?'

Short answer: Check three usual suspects in order — boilerplate descriptions, URL parameters, and cross-domain feeds.

The longer version: Hunt in this sequence.
— Manufacturer descriptions: grab a sentence from 5 product pages and search it in quotes. If 200 other sites have it verbatim, you're competing on copied text. Rewrite top sellers first.
— Parameter duplicates: crawl the site and group URLs that return identical content under different params (tracking, sort, session). Canonical or block them.
— Internal duplicates: many products with near-identical short descriptions trigger thin/dupe filters; templatize unique attributes (material, fit, use case).
— Syndication: if you feed Google Shopping or marketplaces, ensure your own canonical wins.

Example: a tools retailer used the supplier's exact copy on 8k pages; rewriting the 300 highest-traffic items lifted category rankings sitewide.

Rule of thumb: most 'duplicate content' is either copied descriptions or parameter sprawl — check those two first.

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