I have search result pages that are completely different showing up as duplicate content.
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I have numerous instances of this same issue in our Crawl Report. We have pages showing up on the report as duplicate content - they are product search result pages for completely different cruise products showing up as duplicate content. Here's an example of 2 pages that appear as duplicate :
http://www.shopforcruises.com/carnival+cruise+lines/carnival+glory/2013-09-01/2013-09-30
http://www.shopforcruises.com/royal+caribbean+international/liberty+of+the+seas
We've used Html 5 semantic markup to properly identify our Navigation
<nav>, our search widget as an
<aside>(it has a large amount of page code associated with it). We're using different meta descriptions, different title tags, even microformatting is done on these pages so our rich data shows up in google search. (rich snippet example - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&oq=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&gs_l=hp.3...1102.1102.0.1601.1.1.0.0.0.0.142.142.0j1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.gvI6vhnx8fk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44442042,d.eWU&fp=a03ba540ff93b9f5&biw=1680&bih=925 )
How is this distinctly different content showing as duplicate? Is SeoMoz's site crawl flawed (or just limited) and it's not understanding that my pages are not dupe?
Copyscape does not identify these pages as dupe. Should we take these crawl results more seriously than copyscape?
What action do you suggest we take?
</aside>
</nav>
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We do handle it a bit differently - we try to flag near duplicates by looking at source code. Glancing at a few of the instances on your site, I think we're getting a bit hung up by all of the code for the menus (like the drop-down options). It's really heavy HTML, so when only a couple of search results are different, it's making the pages seem too similar.
On the one hand, I think Google does know to ignore some aspects, like menus, and the distinct META data does help. On the other hand, search results pages, especially ones with limited or similar results, are considered fairly low value by Google, and you've got a ton of them. By trying to rank all of these variations, you probably are diluting your index quite a bit.
So, I'd say that we're being overzealous here, but I'd also say that it's indicative of a problem to some extent.
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