Duplicate titles, meta descriptions & search engines

[Jonathan Read]

We now have over 2,500 products on our site and Google's webmaster tools have reported that we have quite a lot with duplicate titles and/or meta descriptions. Does anyone know if this is a problem or does this need addressing in terms of search engine etc.?

[petad]

We now have over 2,500 products on our site and Google's webmaster tools have reported that we have quite a lot with duplicate titles and/or meta descriptions. Does anyone know if this is a problem or does this need addressing in terms of search engine etc.?
Not sure how much it helps, but there's a thread on this very subject in this forum http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=56053

[Jonathan Read]

Thanks for this. I will attempt to remove duplicates where possible. However, if I have a product in more than one category - how do I make the titles or meta descriptions different as we can only set one per product? I'm sure we're not the only one with this issue - is it anything to bother about - Google's tools report it as a potential problem so perhaps it is.

Regards

[Gillf]

Hi
We have the same problem with products in more than one category being counted by Google as duplicate. Google scares me because it has so much power to make or break a business so anything that might displease Google sends me into a bit of a panic. I queried Rich on this issue and Rich said he thought that over time Google would just drop the pages it considered duplicate. While this might not appear to be a major problem since one category will still be in the listings I still consider it is a problem as it means lost traffic searching for items that are specific to the dropped category. So for that reason I have decided to rebuild the site loading products to each category individually rather than using the option of multiple categories. I do wish there was an alternative but I cannot see an alternative.

Gill
www.ever-so-sexy.com
Luxury Lingerie Online.

[Jonathan Read]

I did think maybe a way of adding a variable (say the catagory name) to a title or meta description would do the trick. It would be something for Rich though!

Regards

[john]

Hi
We have the same problem with products in more than one category being counted by Google as duplicate. Google scares me because it has so much power to make or break a business so anything that might displease Google sends me into a bit of a panic. I queried Rich on this issue and Rich said he thought that over time Google would just drop the pages it considered duplicate. While this might not appear to be a major problem since one category will still be in the listings I still consider it is a problem as it means lost traffic searching for items that are specific to the dropped category. So for that reason I have decided to rebuild the site loading products to each category individually rather than using the option of multiple categories. I do wish there was an alternative but I cannot see an alternative.

Gill
www.ever-so-sexy.com (http://www.ever-so-sexy.com)
Luxury Lingerie Online.
Google will drop the items it considers are duplicated in other categories, NOT the entire category, therefore there's no point in worrying about it, the first time that Google indexes the product will be the one in search results, the duplicates will not rate, if people search for a category, then that will be a page from the category that Google considers the best.
Concentrate on making it easy for customers to find what they want on your site, not Googlebots and the rest will follow.

[Dave]

I maybe wrong but I think this is the reason why Rich does not show duplicates within the HTML sitemap. The product will only show within the first category but obviously this does not stop google from finding (what it sees as duplicates) by following the menu structure.

IF google is going to penalise people for what it sees being duplicates then this will cause us all big problems with the building of new sites. I think google may just drop the duplicates but be interested in other peoples experiences/opinions on this.

My suggestion would be for Rich to allow people to switch off the category display within the url for products so the system only generates one hml product page regardless of category.

For example we have one black toner in three categories. Going through the menu it structure it will display the product page as

/hptoners/hp-colour-laserjet-1600/q6000a.html
/hptoners/hp-colour-laserjet-2600/q6000a.html
/hptoners/hp-colour-laserjet-2605/q6000a.html

Once you have selected the product from category/sub-category it would be great it the product page was generated and displayed as

/q6000a.html

This would be my suggestion and it would make the sites more seo friendly

However, it would also cause problems for people sites that have already been built and are being listed in the search engines because of the url changes and therefore need to be optional.

I would really like to get this one sorted before I get too far into building the site which will have in excess of 5,000 products loaded!

Look forward to comments!

[Rich]

My suggestion would be for Rich to allow people to switch off the category display within the url for products so the system only generates one hml product page regardless of category.

This wouldn't work I'm afraid, the site needs to know which category you're viewing the product in. The URL is the only real option to pass this information. Anything done with sessions or cookies would be very messy and wouldn't ultimately work.

[petad]

Hi Dave

Have you tried the above sample links you have provided...????

Regards

Pete

[Dave]

Hi Dave

Have you tried the above sample links you have provided...????

Regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

No but I have now :D

Rich.....Can you amend the post to take out the offending domain name in my posting? Don't think I am able to amend or delete them myself?

[petad]

Hi Pete,

No but I have now :D

Rich.....Can you amend the post to take out the offending domain name in my posting? Don't think I am able to amend or delete them myself?

I did have a giggle over that one. Beware the XXX :D