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Duplicate content refers to blocks of content that appear on multiple URLs, either within the same domain or across different domains. Google does not want to serve the same content twice, so it attempts to identify the canonical version and may suppress duplicates in results.
Duplicate content rarely results in a penalty unless it is clearly manipulative. More commonly, it causes ranking dilution — multiple pages competing for the same query split the signals that would otherwise concentrate on one page.
Internal duplication often occurs due to CMS settings (mobile versions, printer-friendly pages, session IDs in URLs, tag and category pages with overlapping content). External duplication occurs when content is syndicated or scraped.
Example
An e-commerce site with 10 color variants of a product each on their own URL, all with identical product descriptions, has duplicate content. Canonicalizing to the main variant URL resolves this.
Apply this in practice
Definitions are step one.
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