Duplicate Content Vs. Usability Options

[qwerty]

I'm getting started on a proposal for a pretty standard-looking e-commerce site. Their CMS allows them to put a given product into multiple categories, which then generates multiple pages for that product. The only differences between those pages are the URL (which is formatted domain.com/shop/category/product_name) and the breadcrumb trail (Home > Shop > Category > Product).

So they've got plenty of duplicate content, but I'm finding that Google isn't being overly picky -- for every duplicate page I check, big G has a cached copy.

I could easily set up 301s so users would still be able to access a given product from multiple paths, but they'd always end up on the same product page, thus concentrating the internal link juice for that page, but I'm concerned that that might cause usability issues. If a user clicks through to a product's page from the Clearance area for example and I send them to that product's main URL rather than the duplicate page that contains "Clearance" in the URL, then should they choose to go back to the main Clearance area via the breadcrumb trail they're not going to see "Clearance" in the path, one level above the current page.

What do you think -- is it worth losing that aspect of usability? Is there another way around this? Since all the pages are getting indexed, I could just leave it as it is, but I figure this has to be diluting the strength of the product pages.

[qwerty]

[bump]

No suggestions?

[Jill]

It's a tricky one, especially without seeing things in action.

I'd personally always want only one URL for any user to end up at. If you could manage to do that without messing up breadcrumbs and stuff, that would be the way to do it.

[Randy]

It is a tough one, being a issue of how much more than if.

What I mean by that is most carts these days allow the webmaster to include products in more than one category, which typically results in essentially duplicate pages. Using this for some things isn't a bad thing, especially from a Users perspective. And I've not seen any search engines having major issues with it either.

As a for instance, I'll use the old prom dress site I used to work on as example again. There each Dress Designer has their own category. Then there are also categories of Dress that are currently In Stock and available for immediate shipment (only in the size/color in stock, but all the rest is the same) and also an On Sale category for dresses that were left over from last year.

Thus it's entirely possible that several hundred dresses appear in two of these general cats (the Designer Name and In Stock) and in the case of last year's styles there would be in three different cats: Designer, In Stock and On Sale.

In short, there are literally hundreds of pages that are duplicated at the product level. But it's kind of necessary from the customers perspective. Some users don't care if it's this years hot style or not, and want something quality but at a great price. Others are pressed for time and don't have the 8 weeks to wait from something to come from the Designer's warehouse, so need to find something In Stock that can be shipped to arrive in a few days.

The duplication is necessary to best service users.

A point to make though is that even though there are hundreds of duplicate pages this number pales when you consider that the site has a total of just shy of 20,000 pages. All of which are indexed.

This sort of situation is one where I've never seen the search engines balk at doing deep crawls and indexing all pages, even if they have some of them already under another url. FTR, I did make sure the cart has the ability to show the Category name at the top of the page as part of the headline. Not just in the breadcrumb, but as part of the actual page content. Along with some other information about the product of course. So that may have some bearing on the equation.

I suspect if you ended up with a situation where every product appeared in 2 or 3 different categories it would not only become confusing for Users, but might also start freaking out the search engines a bit. I guess the trick is to make sure however is setting up the cats and entering the product information makes wise choices when considering whether a product truly belongs in a couple of different categories. Or if one categories basically mirrors another one whether both are really needed or should be combined.

I don't have any hands on experience with that type of mass duplication, because I'd never let it get that bad in the first place. Not because of the search engines but because I think it would quickly confuse real visitors.

[arlen]

FTR, I did make sure the cart has the ability to show the Category name at the top of the page as part of the headline. Not just in the breadcrumb, but as part of the actual page content. Along with some other information about the product of course. So that may have some bearing on the equation.

What was the theory here Randy? To distinguish the 2 due to duplicate content potential, or because the category was a relevant key phrase ... ?

My new system does something similar.

[Randy]

I didn't do that for any search engine reasons at all Arlen. With larger sites like that I simply like to give some consistent, easy to find visual references for real people viewing the pages. Sort of a You Are Here marker that works along with the breadcrumb navigation.

[qwerty]

Even if you don't do that for the engines, do you think they'd see it as enough of a signal that the page isn't a duplicate of the one with the same text, other than a different heading and breadcrumb trail?

[Randy]

I kind of doubt it Bob.

I mean we're only talking about 1-3 words additional difference. Sure it's in a <Hx> tag and now that I look at it again also in the <title> tag, but still the page content is essentially the same.

Since they do all seem to get indexed I suppose those tiny differences could have an impact on which pages show up in the SERPs for certain longtail keyword searches. Even if they are very, very similar to other pages. Honestly I'm not dug into the situation or the stats nearly that deeply.

[BBCoach]

This sort of situation is one where I've never seen the search engines balk at doing deep crawls and indexing all pages, even if they have some of them already under another url. FTR, I did make sure the cart has the ability to show the Category name at the top of the page as part of the headline. Not just in the breadcrumb, but as part of the actual page content. Along with some other information about the product of course. So that may have some bearing on the equation.

I found that it did make a large difference in SEs having duplicate info on products in multiple categories. The way I solved it is to have the same page name regardless of what category the product was associated in. For example, the page www.mysite.com/12345.html is the same page name in both the catnip category and the play toys category. From my observations this is the best way to handle duplicate product content resulting from multiple categorizations because really there isn't any.

[qwerty]

So what you're doing has the same effect as setting up a 301 from all the alternate versions of a page to the one canonical version, right?

Do you find that that causes problems with elements like breadcrumbs (if you use breadcrumbs)? That is, the user is in the catnip category, where the breadcrumb trail reads home > shop > catnip items, they click a product, get taken to a particular page for a catnip toy in the toys category, and the breadcrumb trail reads home > shop > toys > squeaky mouse catnip toy rather than home > shop > catnip items > squeaky mouse catnip toy.

Or do you have a way to generate the same page with the same URL, but a different breadcrumb trail?

[Jill]

Maybe the answer is to just not have breadcrumbs?

[qwerty]

Maybe. We had a discussion here many years ago about a study that indicated that very few users actually make use of breadcrumb trails. If I remember correctly, my opinion at the time was that they were worth having 1) for the few who do take advantage of them and 2) because they gave you a great opportunity to put the keywords right onto the page, running from the most general to the most specific.

[BBCoach]

Or do you have a way to generate the same page with the same URL, but a different breadcrumb trail?

Yes. That's exactly what I do. There is no confusion for users because the products can logically be categorized in both places and there are no duplicate pages being indexed. Just different paths to the same product. The only difference in page content is the breadcrumbs.

1) for the few who do take advantage of them and 2) because they gave you a great opportunity to put the keywords right onto the page, running from the most general to the most specific.

That's exactly why I still use breadcrumbs. Yum, yum eat 'em up.

BTW, a "Chief Marketing Technician" would never be able to synthesize this design, but now they can run to their IT people and say, "Hey, great idea to eliminate dupe pages. Implement this now." Ha! ha! A little dig on another post.

Sorry, I forgot to answer this question:

Do you find that that causes problems with elements like breadcrumbs (if you use breadcrumbs)? That is, the user is in the catnip category, where the breadcrumb trail reads home > shop > catnip items, they click a product, get taken to a particular page for a catnip toy in the toys category, and the breadcrumb trail reads home > shop > toys > squeaky mouse catnip toy rather than home > shop > catnip items > squeaky mouse catnip toy.

No. This doesn't happen because I created a system whereby all products must have a parent category they're associated to. All remaining category associations are not shown when a user comes in from another site or they perform a query on our site. The primary category (breadcrumbs) is what's displayed when this occurs. BTW, this system is of course custom made and no CMS package out there will do what I'm talking about. Using this methodology is also another reason I don't do keywords in URLs/URIs and my products rank very nicely, but we don't want to go back to that conversation (at least I'm not going to).

This post has been edited by BBCoach: Jan 13 2009, 07:05 PM

[Catz]

Clearance is that one area of the site that might have some special considerations, such as that the people looking at clearance items will most likley want to quickly and easily get back to viewing other clearance items.

It can be frustrating when you are looking at clearance items and end up led out of the clearance area, having to backtrack to get back to other items you might be interested in.

[BBCoach]

It can be frustrating when you are looking at clearance items and end up led out of the clearance area, having to backtrack to get back to other items you might be interested in.

Not if there's a link to it on every page. Put it either in the header, menu, or footer. A proper design never leaves users lost. Also, that page has the Clearance breadcrumb at the top of the page.

This post has been edited by BBCoach: Jan 14 2009, 11:42 AM