Duplicate Content/Products and SEO

[kakshaks]

Hi All
As with many stores, I need to allocate products to multiple categories. For example, '101 ways to avoid Gardening' might be available on my store under both Books and Gardening. All my products are SPP and I have created the original product under the Books section with a page name of '101_Gardening_Book.html'. I then create a new page under the Gardening section named '101_Gardening_Book_copy.html' and copy the product into that section as a duplicate. Effectively, the pages end up identical except the breadcrumb is different.
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I understand this is not too clever as far as Search Engines are concerned as they would frown on duplicate content. Is it really that big an issue and should I therefore have different content (eg description) or are there alternative thoughts on how I should proceed or not bother.
Thanks in advance.

[TraceyHand]

to be honest, I really wouldn't worry. On the whole, Google will just ignore the duplicate content rather than penalise you for it.
It's not as if you're creating clones of entire websites or anything.

[Mike Hughes]

I agree with what she says ^

Mike

[Quantum]

or you could contact Lee at http://www.websitedesigned.co.uk/ and get him to implement his Related Products feature. Removes the need for duplicate pages.

For example we have many related products all linking through to the same page. Try the Monitor Audio Bronze BR5 AV Package :-

http://www.quantumelectronics.co.uk/...tor_Audio.html

http://www.quantumelectronics.co.uk/acatalog/Mon.html

http://www.quantumelectronics.co.uk/...-speakers.html

http://www.quantumelectronics.co.uk/..._packages.html

All the above (and there are more of the same) link through to the same product page.

I can't emphasis enough the benefits in upload speed and time for creation of duplicates. You can have multiple duplicates in seconds.

[completerookie]

search for

google duplicate content canonical

this tag that you add to your 'duplicate pages' tells google not to index them, but repoints back to the 'master page'
admittedly, its not going to solve all search engines
you could always use a customVariable to control the generation of the tag.

kev