Google Products / Google Shopping

[GrouchyKids]

My client has a site with products a lot of which are so similar in function that for usability reasons we have combined some products on the same pages.

We want to get into Google Shopping, but on the face of it the Google feed seems to want unique urls per product.

I guess we could have products on the same page then have single pages as well, though that could generate duplicate content.

We could also try pointing several products to 1 URL, does anyone know if this would work?

Or can anyone suggest any work arounds?

Justin

[GrouchyKids]

Thanks for taking the time to answer guys...

"take the time out to highlight the slightly different features of each product and put each of them on a different page."

I would if I could the differences are minor, sometimes only about the product size.

I am more concerned about user experience, adding them on different pages will overwhelm the site with very similar products.

Each page typically has 4 product variations I know its not ideal but is there any reason why I cannot pick one of the variations and leave the other 3 out?

[magicrob]

I'd give each product a unique URL and its own content, but for displaying the products some shopping carts offer a Bundle or Grouped Product option.

Also, you could just group products under a Category page to show to non-Google Shopping traffic, and use Related Items links to promote similar products on each individual Product Page

[irvingw]

I am not keen on using the canonical tag as an upfront solution. I would say to take the time out to highlight the slightly different features of each product and put each of them on a different page. If you find that difficult to do, then you can noindex the pages you that are duplicates and nofollow all internal links to these pages. Finally, I would highlight the difference of each product in the title of the product or Google Shopping will have a very hard differentiating these products.

[EnhancedPath]

Sounds to me like you could give each product it's own URL for that purpose, then to avoid the duplicate content issue just rel=canonical those pages back to the page where they actualy live.

I haven't had to do this yet myself though, so I'm sure someone will jump in and say for sure

Brian