Simular product pages
-
I have 27000 products on my website, showed one by one on a separated webpage. Google index them almost all (+- 25000). But the SEOmoz report shows them as duplicated content. Indeed, most of the page is identical, only changing description and price of the product which is indeed not more than 2% of the total content of the page. On the bottom of the product page are shown the alternatives for this product, mainly other colors. So, within the same family of products that can have 50 products, the site creates 50 webpages showing the product and it's family. That's why nearly everything on the page is identical within this family of products.
My guess is, as Google indexed them all, I should not worry about duplicated content.
Is my guess correct?
Thanks for a soon answer.
Rik
-
Are you telling me now that I shouldn't be worried that much about SEOmoz flagging 6000 errors on duplicate content as long as my pages get indexed by Google and my site ranking well?
-
You're right on that count. Google doesn't exactly open-source their algos and share them with everyone. We did just change the way we detect duplicate content, and made a blog post about it yesterday. Fewer false positives should exist regarding duplicate content, but things like this will probably still get flagged.
-
OK, I understand. I saw others doing the same. I only never guessed why they did group products where only the color is a variation. Now you gave me a head-ache as this is a very very major change in my approach if I want to group my products on one page. In case I want to set up canonical for the preferred version, I need to sort out how to do this programmatically as I might have 27000 different product pages, HTML-wise I only have one. But this can't be that hard to find out.
I stay with one doubt, however you might be right. My site is 4 years old and for almost 3 years was on Number One in organic Google in Belgium with a competition of more than 4 million. If Google at one time had considerated my approach of one page per product as duplicate content I never would have get there.
Highly appreciated, your comment as well as the one of donford.
Thanks.
-
I think this is exactly what you are looking for -
http://maileohye.com/seo-tips-for-e-commerce-sites/
And personally what I feel is that these pages will be considered duplicate and therefore, you need to fix them by setting up canonical for the preferred version. Or if there is one standalone page, you need to block other pages/ color variations from search engines. Let me know what you think.
-
The pages you show are (in my eyes) completely different, much more different than the ones I have.
Two samples both indexed where only the color and the price differs. The site ranks well in Google, the pages are showed when entering the product code. The pages itself have very low trust (1).
As the site ranks very well, the pages are indexed and SEOmoz showing duplicate content error, it must be that the used algorithm is different between Google and SEOmoz.
-
It sounds like you're on target if your pages are returning high or well on SERP's. To answer the question about the % of difference that I don't know, I can show you an example using our o-ring pages.
AS001 size orings in 2 different materials
Basically the same information but added some material specific information to each page to help differentiate them in the search engines. Again not sure what % difference that is, but we have no dup content warnings here at SEOmoz.
-
Thanks for your answer and yes it makes sence. However my products shift in brands, every brand has families and every family has product codes. As the product code being the keyword - many visitors are looking for the product using the product code as a keyword - the SE doesn't have any problems to show the right page. If a visitor use the family name or the brand name in a search, my site has specific landing pages for those searches.
I launched my question because I am worried that my site will go down in the organic ranking because Google could consider all those product pages as duplicated content. I never worried before because I'm in the top 3 for years now. I only started to worry the moment I started to use SEOmoz and they give me thousands of errors for duplicated content.
Mainly, how much must a page differ in content to be considered unique and not risking a penalty from Google for duplicated content. Or otherwise, how much must a page differ for SEOmoz not considering it anymore duplicated content.
-
This is common for eCommerce sites, the error should be taken seriously, however there usually isn't an easy fix. The end goal of course is not necessarily for Google or any SE to index them, rather that when a particular keyword is hit the page is returned in the results.
Last year I upgraded our ecommerce site which sells orings (very similar products) I spent a lot of extra time to try and differentiate each o-ring page from one another. In the end it paid off, no duplicate content, all pages indexed, and placing well in SERP's.
So to answer your question while having them in Google's index is helpful, I would say you should worry about the duplicate content error as it is indicative that crawlers / search engines may have trouble returning the correct page for your specific keywords.
Hope that makes sense
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will SEO Blogs Divert Traffic from Main Web pages using same keywords?
Our company has drafted several SEO blogs using certain keywords. If we post these SEO blogs to our website and social media channels , and the blog keywords are also used on our main website pages, will the blogs divert or dilute traffic to our main web pages? Thank you for your expertise and insights in advance.
Content Development | | Johnenchroma0 -
Single page verses multiple pages
I am working on a client website that has a Services section. Each service could have its own page. The problem is that some of the sections only have a 3 sentence paragraph. I am not sure if this is enough content to be considered quality. I am of course going to recommend that they revisit their copy and expand on what they do, but the question remains. Is it better to have one lengthy page of services or individual services/page even though the content is light? I know it would benefit from multiple if there was substantial content, but that is not the case in this instance. Thank you!
Content Development | | thinkseo0 -
How to optimize content pages with ecommerce?
Some content pages act as buyers guides for certain products for example Used Paddle Boards for Sale - http://www.islesurfboards.com/used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx this is a content page that gets huge amount of traffic and is pure content with no products on the page, but we also have a ecommerce section of the site that is Used Paddle Boards for Sale -http://www.islesurfboards.com/buy-used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx however this page just has a small paragraph and all the ecommerce product related to this section on the page. The content only page above gets all the traffic and rank and then they click over to the actual ecomm section wiht the products from a link on that page. Should i merge these two together so its just one page and put the content on the ecom page? If i do all the content with push the ecommerce products down which is not good so what does anyone recommend as a best practice? Also will this mess up the content pages rank is i merge them assuming i redirect? or Keep them seperate like i have with a content page regarding "used paddle boards for sale" and an ecommerce page that sells acutal "used paddle boards for sale"
Content Development | | isle_surf0 -
How does one write different pages of their website that are very similar in nature with using too much duplicate content?
We are a service provider and we have different links on our website to each of our services. The problem is the content that we would have for each is very similar. How can I ensure that it is not deemed duplicate content and ranked poorly because of it. Thanks
Content Development | | JayTurner0 -
Is putting introduction to new stories on the front page a good idea
Hi, i am trying to find out if i should be putting all the introduction to new stories on the front page of my magazine www.in2town.co.uk. I am not sure if to just put certain stories on the home page or if it would be better for seo reasons to put everything on the front page for the search engines to pick it up quickly. so for example, all health stories, all news stories and all lifestyle stories that have their own section, should i make sure that they all appear on the home page as an introduction. Or should i have them kept in their own section please do let me know
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to edit Page Title & Meta Description in Blogger?
I'm managing my blog on Blogger platform. I have published 7 blog posts to my patio umbrellas blog. Today, I have published following blog post to my blog. http://vistastores.blogspot.com/2012/03/offset-umbrellas-awesome-choice-for.html When I see page title so it is shows me as follow. Patio Umbrellas Blog: Offset Umbrellas: Awesome choice for good quality time outside! I want to remove Patio Umbrellas Blog: segment from each blog posts' page title. I can't find out Meta description in my blog posts. So, How can I make it happen?
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
My WebSite has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similiar but unique content ) to be listed?
My Web Site has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similar but unique content ) to be listed? Example: http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_week_12.htm http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_12_weeks.html
Content Development | | docjamesmd0 -
Changing Text on Pages
For one of my sites I'm in a situation where I have 6 main pages that are for lack of a better word "showcased," one of which being the homepage. The problem is that I am seeing pretty good traffic growth, but my conversions/sales are really weak, and I'm about 95% positive that this is because there is too much information on all of those pages --- each one has about 1500 words or so. The site architecture and link structure on the site is good as out of the couple of hundred pages on the site only 3 of them aren't indexed according to Google webmaster tools. What I want to do is rewrite the text on those six main pages with more of a sales type of feel and limit them to 500-700 words or so. This will have no impact on the link architecture whatsoever, but I'm a bit worried that it will have a negative impact on my continual traffic growth. Actually, I'm not as much concerned about the continual part as the steady new content stream should take care of it, but I would be very concerned if I lost the rankings that I have right now. Granted, those rankings aren't worth as much as they could be because conversions are down, so so it's kind of a catch-22. The question is, how dangerous is what I'm planning on doing? On a side note, my lack of conversions has nothing to do with my description or title tags that show up in the results as they are targeted properly and written for sales. The problem is that the pages, though rich in content, are a bit too rich in content and need to be fixed to work in unison with the descriptions and titles.
Content Development | | RussNauta0