Duplicate Entries in Giveaways: Why and How to Handle Them

Where duplicates come from

A duplicate entry is one that appears on your list more than once for the same person. The reasons are usually harmless. People comment twice because they are not sure the first comment went through, because they want to add a thought, or because the rules were ambiguous and they assumed more comments meant more chances.

Duplicates also come from the way the list is made. A person who tags friends may be counted for every tag, and a person who entered on two posts of the same giveaway can show up twice. In some cases, duplicates are deliberate: someone trying to improve their odds by posting the same comment repeatedly, or by using several accounts. Telling the cases apart is the organiser’s job, which is why the policy matters more than the list.

How duplicates change the odds

In a random draw from a list, each line has the same chance. If one person appears five times and everybody else appears once, that person’s chance is five times higher than anyone else’s. If 100 people each appear once and one more entrant appears 100 times, half of the list belongs to a single person.

That is not necessarily wrong. Plenty of giveaways give extra entries on purpose as a reward for extra effort. The problem arises when the extra entries were not intended or are not disclosed. Entrants who followed the rules end up with worse odds than the rules promised, and the organiser has a fairness problem they did not create deliberately.

Decide your policy first

There are two honest policies, and either is fine if you say it in advance:

• One entry per person. Extra comments are ignored, so everybody has the same chance. This is the simplest to explain and the easiest to defend.
• Bonus entries. Specific extra actions, such as sharing the post or answering an extra question, earn a stated number of additional entries. Each qualifying action is counted and each entry goes into the draw.

Write your choice in the giveaway rules, for instance “only one entry per person; additional comments do not increase your chances”. UK advertising guidance on prize draws notes that where several actions are required, organisers should track every entrant and include everyone who qualifies, including those with bonus entries. The principle applies more widely: whatever counts, count it consistently.

Removing duplicates before the draw

If you run a one-entry-per-person giveaway, clean the list before drawing. Copy the entrants’ usernames rather than whole comments where you can, because full comments differ from one another even when the same person wrote them, so they are hard to match. A list of usernames lets repeated names stand out.

A comment picker such as this one has an option to remove duplicates before the draw. Matching works line by line, so tidy the list first. A stray space, a different capital letter or a username written with and without an @ sign can make two lines look different even though they refer to one person. Scan the cleaned list once before drawing, and keep a copy of the version you used.

Keeping duplicates on purpose

When your rules grant bonus entries, do not remove duplicates, or you will take away entries you promised. Instead, make sure that each person appears exactly as many times as they earned. A person with one comment and a qualifying share appears twice. A person with one comment appears once.

Building such a list takes more care. Check each extra action, count it once and write down how you counted. Bonus systems are generous but they are also the most common source of complaints, because they depend on the organiser verifying actions that are hard to see. If you cannot verify an action reliably, it is often better not to offer a bonus for it.

Multiple accounts and repeated text

Some duplicates are harder to catch because they are not the same name. One person may enter from several accounts, and spam comments may repeat identical text from many accounts. Removing exact duplicates will not catch these.

Your rules can help. State that each person may enter once, that using multiple accounts is not allowed and that entries which break the rules may be disqualified. You can then act when you see an obvious pattern, such as a block of identical comments posted seconds apart. Be careful, though: similar accounts or similar comments are not proof of wrongdoing, so reserve disqualification for cases where you are reasonably sure, and apply the same standard to everyone.

Keep a record of what you did

Whatever you decide, write down the steps: the time you closed entries, how you built the list, how many entries you started with, how many remained after cleaning and which entries you excluded and why. A short note is enough, and it is useful if somebody later questions the result.

If someone asks why they have only one entry, you can point to the rule they agreed to when they entered. If someone asks why a comment was removed, you can answer from your notes. In both cases the answer is better when the policy was set before the draw, not invented afterwards to fit a result.