The same "About" page on multiple WordPress microsites

[SpaMedica]

Hello there,

I have over 10 WordPress websites that all have the same "About" page because the same company. I have concerns that this will adversely affect my sites and i'm looking for the best way to deal with this.

I was either going to remove the "About" page with Google Webmaster Tools and robots.txt or use the canonical meta tag on that page.

Any thoughts?

[SpaMedica]

Thanks for your help Marie. I think I'll add the canonical tag to all the "About" pages leading to the original page like you said.

[MarieHaynes]

If it's just one page that does this it's not likely to make a HUGE deal.  Google will take the one that they feel should rank best and rank that one.  The others likely won't display in the SERPS.

The fear, I am guessing, is Panda.  Now, if there are multiple pages on your sites that have duplicate content, then having the about page duplicated is one more straw on the camel's back.

With all of that being said, if it is appropriate, this is probably a good place to use a rel canonical tag and point it to the About Us page on the main site.  This will tell Google that only that one page should be in the index.