Duplicate Page Title problems with Product Catalogues (Categories, Subcategories etc.)

[ExperienceOz]

Hey guys,

I've done a fair bit of Googling and "mozzing" and can't seem to find a definitive solution. In our product catalogue on our site we have multiple ways to access the product for navigation purposes, and SeoMoz is throwing up hundreds of duplicate page title errors which are basically just different ways to get to the same product yet it sees it as a "separate page" and thus duplicating itself.

Is this just SeoMoz confusing itself or does Google actually see it this way too?

For example, a product might be:

www.example.com/region/category/subcategory/

www.example.com/region2/category/subcategory/

www.example.com/region/category/subcategory2/

etc. Is the only solution to have the product ONLY listed in one combination? This kind of kills our ability to have easy refinement for customers browsing the catalogue, i.e: something that falls under the "Gifts for Men" might also be a match for "Father's Day Gifts" or "Gifts for Dad" etc.

Any solution or advice is greatly appreciated, cheers

[KeriMorgret]

Google looks at URLs, and not pages. It's the same content, but on different URLs.

If Google delivered mail, it would think the following were all different houses:

123 Main Street, Los Angeles, California 90210
123 Main St., Los Angeles, California 90210
123 Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90210
123 Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90210-1234

If you're able to use a canonical tag in your custom CMS, you can effectively tell Google that one specific URL is the "right" one, and that all of the others should be treated as if they were the "right" one.

[ExperienceOz]

Hi Chris,

We aren't using a standardised CMS as our system was built from the ground up by our in-house development team several years ago so I can't give you an exact framework to go by unfortunately.

And yes, Webmaster Tools returns errors for duplication, i.e (i'll give you a sample URL path) we get duplicate title errors for different paths to navigate to the same product:

/jungle-surfing-through-the-daintree-rainforest/jungle-adventures-nightwalks/port-douglas/day-tours/jungle-surfing-canopy-tours/jungle-adventures-nightwalks

In other words, people are finding the raw Operator -> Product link organically and can land there via that route, or they can navigate through our catalogue by

Region -> Category -> Operator -> Product

...but in the end it's the same page they are landing on regardless.

Kind of hard to explain but hope that helps some.

Thanks!

[ChrisDyson]

Hi Ben,

What CMS are you using for your e-commerce platform e.g. Magento, oscommerce?

If you can let me know what you are using I might be able to help you out a bit more.

Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are any duplication issues?

[BlueprintMarketing]

I Think this will help you

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ecommerce-seo-making-product-pages-into-great-content-whiteboard-friday

http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-on-ecommerce-sites

http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-can-you-avoid-duplicate-content-within-your-own-e-commerce-website

Remember to use

use rel=canonical as well

I want to ask you a quick question as well is this actually affecting your site what is your page rank? What is your Moz rank? How old is your domain? If your website is ranking well chances are Google understands that it is a e-commerce website and is not penalizing you as it would another type site. If you are being penalized by me know. You may also want to employee majestic SEO tools to look your link profile history in addition to the excellent tools found here. Remember you always have one private question every month if you're a pro member to ask the staff. I hope that it does not come to that however I do SEO on e-commerce sites and just use different descriptions never spin the content though make it fresh every time.

All the best,

Tom

[BlueprintMarketing]

• Okay I think I have an answer for you. If you are an e-commerce website and you are having issues with duplicate content because of the reasons you've given let's say the main page shows everything shirts, then another page has blue shirts so the URL like HTTP://example.com/shirts and the blue shirt will be in a URL something like this HTTP://example.com/shirts/blue
• I believe this is forgivable however I would build my site out to reflect a new category and have the wording be unique for each so my blue shirt's description would be different on shirts that would be on shirts/blue I hope that makes some sense however I do believe that there is a whiteboard Friday just after Google dropped Penguin in our lap where Rand discusses this I will look for and add it to this if I can find it however if you look in the search box here on Moz you will want to type in something to the tune of "things we should not worry about after Penguin" now you have to understand I do not recall this exactly so I sincerely hope to you & let me know if I can and help you anymore.
• Respectfully,
• Thomas von Zickell