I manage SEO for a local business. I'm not an agency, but employed by them to do this job. I have asked them to start creating unique product descriptions instead of copying and pasting descriptions from either the manufacturer or another retailer offering the same product - they do not listen to me.

I just would like some more expert opinions on this matter. I believe that by creating unique product descriptions, we can become more competitive in SERPs by utilizing keywords properly and effectively.

However, a quick Google search will show that this is very disputed - some articles say it's fine and some say it's outright terrible.

Our products don't rank well on search engines, it's more our landing pages and blogs that get the traffic. I'm convinced that this is because of the duplicated product descriptions. They have nearly 2000 products and almost nearly every single one contains either duplicated content from another website or is very, very thin, i.e. they just put the SKU with one sentence.

So, let's settle this here...is this a good or bad practice?