What to do with eCommerce site with color variations of the same product?

[jchosler]

On our eCommerce website we sell products that each have about 20 color variations. When the site was built each color variation was added individually instead as a single product with a configurable color option. Would it be best to combine the different variations into a single product with a configurable drop down menu for color or to leave as is? I am worried the search engines see the individual product pages for each color as duplicate content. What are your thoughts on how Zappos handles color variations? On the category page they display each color variation as an individual product but when the product is clicked it goes to a single product page with the different configurable color variations.

Thanks

[josh-riley]

We have this across about 30,000 products (yea, that many). I can't stress enough how much of a duplicate page/title content mess it can become. If your system allows for canonical and pagination it's totally worth the effort.

[Highland]

Depends how the products are displayed. Are your products all under one single URL or is it something like site.com/product/?color=red color=blue, etc? If so, Google sees these as separate pages.

If one have one URL (even if it's AJAX driven), you should be fine. If you have multiple URLs, you need to canonical down to one, or else you will get hit with a duplicate content penalty. You could also remove them as you suggest. Just be sure to 301 redirect your products so you don't lose much SEO benefit.