Wine shop - different ways of searching for products

[lsfinewines]

Hi all

I run an online wine shop http://www.lsfinewines.co.uk specialising in wines from southern France. I am using Actinic Catalog Version 6. The hierarchy of my shop is set out so that each region has its own red wine section, with sub-sections for different sub-regions or "appellations". Other styles of wine (white, rosé, sparkling etc.) also have their own sections.

The thing is that many of the wine growers I feature produce several different wine styles, meaning that their wines tend to feature in several different sections of the shop. Although I am confident that this hierarchy is the optimum (or "least worst") way to list my wines, I also realise the importance of grower (or "brand", if you like). In other words, if customers like the wines of a particular grower, it is important for them to be able to easily view all the wines that I feature from that grower.

I therefore want to find a way of also listing "wines by grower", whilst still maintaining the existing hierarchy of wines by region/sub-region/style. The easiest way to do this would be to create a new section in the shop, with sub-sections for every different grower (currently numbering 24, but increasing steadily) and simply copy and paste each product (now around 100) into the new sections. This is not a problem for me, in terms of different product codes, since I do not use Actinic for stock-management purposes.

My main worry is how the search engines may react to it - will it "offend" them in any way? I'd hate to do something that would affect my rankings (or even for the search engines to start ignoring my site) due to any problems with the duplication of my products.

I am quite happy to go ahead and make these changes, as I am aware of the navigational limitations imposed by the current set-up of my shop. Unfortunately (as anybody who sells wine will no doubt concur) this is a problem particularly inherent in selling wine, due to the sheer diversity of the products.

I would very much appreciate some opinions first, before I go ahead and do this - I'm looking to build on my business, so the last thing I need is to do something which might cause problems. Any thoughts?

Best regards
Leon

[pinbrook]

Version 7 allows product duplicates.

therefore you can have one product in as many sections as you want...

[lsfinewines]

Thanks for that - I know version 7 can list the same product in different sections (presumably with exactly the same code), but I am happy with version 6 and don't really want to go to the expense (not to mention the great deal of time) involved in upgrading. As I said, I am merely concerned about how the search engines will react to my site effectively listing every product twice. Presumably, if my work-around is similar to what version 7 does, then there is no problem?

[RuralWeb]

You may hit a duplicate page penalty but the extra pages would be palced in the suplimentary results cache. To avoid this when you create the copy change the product title and description text slightly to match the section you are adding the wine to, if done with a little thought you could improve your current rankings.

[lsfinewines]

Many thanks for that, Malcolm. I will definitely look into doing that, although it will take a little time to make even minor amendments to 100-odd products, as I create my own html stuff for every product. I'm sure it will be worth it in the end!