OptiDan, an Australia-based specialist in AI-driven SEO solutions, has recently published a report offering fresh insights into the Australian e-commerce sector. It reveals a striking statistic about content across more than 780 online retailers: 85% of it is plagiarised. This raises severe questions about authenticity and quality in the e-commerce world, with possibly grave implications for both consumers and retailers.

Coming from the founders of OptiDan, this report illuminates an issue that has largely fallen under the radar: content duplication. The report indicates that suppliers often supply identical product descriptions to several retailers, resulting in a sea of online stores harbouring the same content. This lack of uniqueness unfortunately leads to many sites being pushed down in search engine rankings, due to algorithms detecting the duplication. This results in retailers having to spend more on visibility through paid advertising to compensate.

Key findings from OptiDan's research include a worrying lack of originality, with 86% of product pages not even meeting basic word count standards. Moreover, even among those that do feature sufficient word counts, plagiarism is distressingly widespread. Notably, OptiDan's study presented clear evidence of the detrimental impacts of poor product content on consumer trust and return rates.

Founder and former retailer JP Tucker notes, "Online retailers anticipate high product ranking by Google and expect sales without investing in necessary, quality content — an essential for both criteria." Research from 2016 by Shotfarm corroborates these findings, suggesting that 40% of customers return online purchases due to poor product content.

Tucker's industry report reveals that Google usually accepts up to 10% of plagiarism to allow for the use of common terms. Nonetheless, OptiDan's study discovered that over 85% of audited product pages were above this limit. Further, over half of the product pages evidenced plagiarism levels over 75%.

"Whilst I knew the problem was there, the high levels produced in the Industry report surprised me," said Tucker, expressing the depth of the issue. He's also noted manufactured absence of the product title in the product description, a crucial aspect of SEO, in 85% of their audited pages. "Just because it reads well, doesn't mean it indexes well."

OptiDan has committed itself to transforming content performance for the online retail sector, aiming to make each brand's content work for them, instead of against them. Tucker guarantees the effectiveness of OptiDan's revolutionary approach: "We specialise in transforming E-commerce SEO content within the first month, paving the way for ongoing optimisation and reindexing performance."

OptiDan has even put a money back guarantee on its full content optimisation service for Shopify & Shopify Plus partners. This offer is expected to extend to non-Shopify customers soon. For now, all retailers can utilise a free website audit of their content through OptiDan.