Welcome to the Q&A Forum

thanks Tompt i appreciate you taking time to reply

do you think its best i keep a short URL as the preferred option or follow a breadcrumb and use that option

e.g. URL.com/brand/appliancetype/product1.html

or have the canonical URL as URL.com/product1.html

if i dont noindex the pages but do provide a canonical link on the page will this remove my duplicate content headache?  

Hi All

OK i have an ecommerce store and there is a load of duplicate content which is pretty much the norm with ecommerce store setups

e.g. this is my problem

http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/brandname/product1.html

so all the above lead to the same product
I also want to keep the breadcrumb path to the product

Here's my plan

Add a canonical URL to the product page
e.g. http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
This way i have a short product URL

Noindex all duplicate pages but do follow the internal links so the pages are spidered

What are the other options available and recommended?

Does that make sense?
Is this what most people are doing to remove duplicate content pages?

thanks