Duplicate products

Chubster · #1 02-07-2009, 10:25 PM

I have a New Products category in my dog section and currently when anything new comes in I put them in there and ALSO the appropriate main category in the dog section.

I believe when these products are being crawled they are showing up as duplicates...

SO...I was thinking of making the New Product category invisible to google?

Bad or good idea ???

#2 02-07-2009, 10:48 PM

Not sure it will make that much difference.

RawRob · #3 03-07-2009, 12:16 AM

Quote:

SO...I was thinking of making the New Product category invisible to google?

I'd say it's a good idea. I assume you will eventually remove them from the new products and leave them in the actual category, so you want the google link to go to the actual category, otherwise you will have broken links from the search engine until it catches up with you.

(Does your shop software not automatically do something with new products? ZenCart has a New products link which shows all new products from the last 30 days (or 60 or 90 whatever you want)).

Rob

Chubster · #4 03-07-2009, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RawRob

(Does your shop software not automatically do something with new products? ZenCart has a New products link which shows all new products from the last 30 days (or 60 or 90 whatever you want)).

Unfortunately not....its all a bit manual.

So as your on...

.....how would I stop google going to this page

http://mydomain/products.php?cat=338.

I assume something in the htaccess file?

Cheers Rob

RawRob · #5 03-07-2009, 12:41 AM

There are two ways of doing it, but not sure either will work for you.

One way is through a robots.txt file but I'm not sure if that can cope with query parameters (the ?cat= bit).

The other is by adding

Code:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

to the head section of the document - can you do that for individual products? (Probably not.)

Maybe you can do it through Google webmaster tools? (But only for Google.)

Rob

#6 03-07-2009, 10:31 AM

The reason I am less convinced that you need to be concerned about Google on this is many fold...

...the new products page will presumably be constantly changing so the duplicity will soon be lost.
...unlike Duplicate content, you are still using a unique page which is relevant to the site as a whole.
...Google doesn't care that it is a product, text that is relevant on one page of your site can be equally relevant on another page.
...products often need repetition to be relevant to different categories of customer users
... there was more, but my mind just wandered off...

Rather than trying to prevent Google seeing the page, baring in mind how much Google likes to see change, if you are concerned about the duplicity, why not just subtly rewrite the description?

As you may of gathered, I personally don't think you have much to worry about with it, I assume your meta-description for the page is very different to the page that the products are permanently on? A certain amount of repetition on a site is not going to have Google black walling you and when you consider links (to the homepage etc) that will be repeated on virtually every page on your site, what Google sees already contains a great deal of similarity.

Chubster · #7 03-07-2009, 11:10 AM

I hear what your saying....and perhaps I am worrying a bit too much.

The products stay on there for about a month, sometimes longer....another issue I have found is that a product may be indexed from the new product category and then, when I remove it from there if anyone then finds that link in google and clicks it they are faced with a "sorry this product no longer exists" message

I realise I can set up a redirect in the htaccess but that relies on me remembering to do it, it will also become quite a large htaccess file, full of redirects over time...

Oh, decisions, decisions......

#8 03-07-2009, 11:27 AM

New Prod range page > Product info page

Permanent product range placement page > [Same] Product info page

Surely? That way Google either sends that link to your new product page or directly to the product info page that is permanent?

Chubster · #9 03-07-2009, 11:30 AM

Eh..?

RawRob · #10 03-07-2009, 12:03 PM

Troy is right, as you are not making a duplicate of the product, you're only putting links to the product from multiple categories then it's not a major problem

(It's still not ideal, I have a similar problem in that Google will index my home page for a product which is listed as a special rather than the actual product page. Then by the time someone clicks the link, the homepage will be showing a different product as a special.)

Rob

Duplicate products

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