undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Duplicate content through product variants

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Duplicate content through product variants

Technical SEO
5
8
3.1k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • netzkern_AG
    netzkern_AG Subscriber last edited by Oct 8, 2015, 10:43 AM

    Hi,

    Before you shout at me for not searching - I did and there are indeed lots of threads and articles on this problem. I therefore realise that this problem is not exactly new or unique.

    The situation: I am dealing with a website that has 1 to N (n being between 1 and 6 so far) variants of a product. There are no dropdown for variants. This is not technically possible short of a complete redesign which is not on the table right now. The product variants are also not linked to each other but share about 99% of content (obvious problem here). In the "search all" they show up individually. Each product-variant is a different page, unconnected in backend as well as frontend. The system is quite limited in what can be added and entered - I may have some opportunity to influence on smaller things such as enabling canonicals.

    In my opinion, the optimal choice would be to retain one page for each product, the base variant, and then add dropdowns to select extras/other variants.

    As that is not possible, I feel that the best solution is to canonicalise all versions to one version (either base variant or best-selling product?) and to offer customers a list at each product giving him a direct path to the other variants of the product.

    I'd be thankful for opinions, advice or showing completely new approaches I have not even thought of!

    Kind Regards,

    Nico

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Martijn_Scheijbeler
      Martijn_Scheijbeler @netzkern_AG last edited by Oct 12, 2015, 6:47 AM Oct 12, 2015, 6:47 AM

      Hehehe yes we do usually!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • netzkern_AG
        netzkern_AG Subscriber @halcyonyarn last edited by Oct 12, 2015, 6:18 AM Oct 12, 2015, 6:18 AM

        Thanks for the hint!

        Personally, I am a big fan of schema.org and marking up all the products has been on my further ToDo list.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • netzkern_AG
          netzkern_AG Subscriber @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by Oct 12, 2015, 6:17 AM Oct 12, 2015, 6:17 AM

          Hi Martijn,

          Thanks for your reply. I'll have to check with the responsible developer - but I fear that this option is not on the table. Then again, I have been hinted at that a complete redesign might eventually be. As I said below: Nobody who does SEO seems to have been around when the site was created. And we all know what happens in such a case, don't we?

          Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Oct 12, 2015, 6:47 AM Reply Quote 0
          • netzkern_AG
            netzkern_AG Subscriber @MattAntonino last edited by Oct 12, 2015, 6:14 AM Oct 12, 2015, 6:14 AM

            Hi Matt,

            If it were only that easy... I have since learnt that way back when the client had that website developed he specifically asked to NOT have an ecommerce website. (I, nor anybody advising on SEO, was not around back then AFAIK.)

            The products are not connected. They are litereally independently created pages with the same template. The URLs are not parameter based but look like

            http://www.example.de/category/subcategory1/subcategory2/product_name-further_description_1

            http://www.example.de/category/subcategory1/subcategory2/product_name-further_descripittion_2

            So, identical apart from the last bit that is NOT a parameter. And the last bit might be "750-kg" or "Alu" or "with-brakes". Thanks for the advice; I agree that it is generally a good starting point but sadly not possible in this case.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • halcyonyarn
              halcyonyarn last edited by Oct 8, 2015, 11:37 AM Oct 8, 2015, 11:37 AM

              Just implemented something similar to this, and used canonicals. Also, if you're able to add more than just canonicals, possibly worth looking at microdata? We used schema.org isVariantOf for colors and size variants, not sure how much this influences googles understanding / search display, but it's widely recommended and seems unlikely to hurt. Implementing took a little trial and error, this helped as did google's schema testing tool.

              netzkern_AG 1 Reply Last reply Oct 12, 2015, 6:18 AM Reply Quote 1
              • MattAntonino
                MattAntonino last edited by Oct 12, 2015, 6:19 AM Oct 8, 2015, 11:10 AM

                What do the duplicate content URLs look like? In a lot of ecommerce systems you end up with parameter-based URLs such as:

                http://www.example.com/products/women/dresses/green.htm
                http://www.example.com/products/women?category=dresses&color=green

                According to Google "When Google detects duplicate content, such as the pages in the example above, a Google algorithm groups the duplicate URLs into one cluster and selects what the algorithm thinks is the best URL to represent the cluster (and) tries to consolidate what we know about the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the one representative URL. However, when Google can't find all the URLs in a cluster or is unable to select the representative URL that you prefer, you can use the URL Parameters tool to give Google information about how to handle URLs containing specific parameters." (see more at Google Support)

                If your URLs are parameter based I would suggest looking into handling them at that level in Search Console or (last resort) robots.txt as well. However, I'd start with canonicals and parameters if possible.

                netzkern_AG 1 Reply Last reply Oct 12, 2015, 6:14 AM Reply Quote 1
                • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                  Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by Oct 12, 2015, 6:19 AM Oct 8, 2015, 10:54 AM

                  Hi Nico,

                  As you said it's far from prefect but I would indeed go with using a canonical on the pages that have duplicate variants. But if you're doing this already then it might be not that much more effort to also link them back on the back-end of your site so you can do more advanced things.

                  netzkern_AG 1 Reply Last reply Oct 12, 2015, 6:17 AM Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Jon-S

                    Product Variations (rel=canonical or 301) & Duplicate Product Descriptions

                    Hi All, Hoping for a bit of advice here please, I’ve been tasked with building an e-commerce store and all is going well so far. We decided to use Wordpress with Woocommerce as our shop plugin. I’ve been testing the CSV import option for uploading all our products and I’m a little concerned on two fronts: - Product Variations Duplicate content within the product descriptions **Product Variations: - ** We are selling furniture that has multiple variations (see list below) and as a result it creates c.50 product variations all with their own URL’s. Facing = Left, Right Leg style = Round, Straight, Queen Ann Leg colour = Black, White, Brown, Wood Matching cushion = Yes, No So my question is should I 301 re-direct the variation URL’s to the main product URL as from a user perspective they aren't used (we don't have images for each variation that would trigger the URL change, simply drop down options for the user to select the variation options) or should I add the rel canonical tag to each variation pointing back to the main product URL. **Duplicate Content: - ** We will be selling similar products e.g. A chair which comes in different fabrics and finishes, but is basically the same product.  Most, if not all of the ‘long’ product descriptions are identical with only the ‘short’ product descriptions being unique. The ‘long’ product descriptions contain all the manufacturing information, leg option/colour information, graphics, dimensions, weight etc etc. I’m concerned that by having 300+ products all with identical ‘long’ descriptions its going to be seen negatively by google and effect the sites SEO. My question is will this be viewed as duplicate content?  If so, are there any best practices I should be following for handling this, other than writing completely unique descriptions for each product, which would be extremely difficult given its basically the same products re-hashed. Many thanks in advance for any advice.

                    Technical SEO | Oct 22, 2015, 1:07 PM | Jon-S
                    0
                  • SanjidaKazi

                    Unique page for each product variant? (Not eCommerce)

                    Hi Mozzers, Just looking for a little advice before I launch into a huge workload. We have landing pages for vehicle manufacturers. We then have anchor links in that page for each vehicle model that manufacturer has, with further info on the model further down the page. So we're toying with the idea of launching a unique page for each of the models rather than having them all on the same landing page. This will take an age and a minute but if it is worth it, we want to do it. Do you guys see a benefit to having unique pages for each model? Do you think it would attract more natural links? Would this help or hinder the manufacturer landing page in general? Should the manufacturer landing page be noindex so as to avoid duplicate content issues? I can see a lot of work and risk, just looking for a few opinions. PM for more info. Thanks a lot people, Jamie

                    Technical SEO | Oct 15, 2015, 9:06 AM | SanjidaKazi
                    0
                  • HiteshP

                    Duplicate content on job sites

                    Hi, I have a question regarding job boards. Many job advertisers will upload the same job description to multiple websites e.g. monster, gumtree, etc. This would therefore be viewed as duplicate content. What is the best way to handle this if we want to ensure our particular site ranks well? Thanks in advance for the help. H

                    Technical SEO | Apr 30, 2015, 12:57 PM | HiteshP
                    0
                  • TIM_DOTCOM

                    Handling of Duplicate Content

                    I just recently signed and joined the moz.com system. During the initial report for our web site it shows we have lots of duplicate content. The web site is real estate based and we are loading IDX listings from other brokerages into our site. If though these listings look alike, they are not. Each has their own photos, description and addresses. So why are they appear as duplicates – I would assume that they are all too closely related. Lots for Sale primarily – and it looks like lazy agents have 4 or 5 lots and input the description the same. Unfortunately for us, part of the IDX agreement is that you cannot pick and choose which listings to load and you cannot change the content. You are either all in or you cannot use the system. How should one manage duplicate content like this? Or should we ignore it? Out of 1500+ listings on our web site it shows 40 of them are duplicates.

                    Technical SEO | Apr 26, 2015, 10:21 PM | TIM_DOTCOM
                    0
                  • fabrizzio

                    Localized domains and duplicate content

                    Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice

                    Technical SEO | Feb 16, 2013, 4:42 PM | fabrizzio
                    0
                  • GeorgFranz

                    How to prevent duplicate content at a calendar page

                    Hi, I've a calender page which changes every day. The main url is
                    /calendar For every day, there is another url: /calendar/2012/09/12
                    /calendar/2012/09/13
                    /calendar/2012/09/14 So, if the 13th september arrives, the content of the page 
                    /calendar/2012/09/13
                    will be shown at
                    /calendar So, it's duplicate content. What to do in this situation? a) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 301? (but the redirect changes the day after to  /calendar/2012/09/14) b) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 302 (but I will loose the link juice of /calendar?) c) Add a canonical tag at /calendar (which leads to /calendar/2012/09/13) - but I will loose the power of /calendar (?) - and it will change every day... Any ideas or other suggestions? Best wishes, Georg.

                    Technical SEO | Sep 10, 2012, 2:21 PM | GeorgFranz
                    0
                  • cmjolley

                    Squarespace Duplicate Content Issues

                    My site is built through squarespace and when I ran the campaign in SEOmoz...its come up with all these errors saying duplicate content and duplicate page title for my blog portion. I've heard that canonical tags help with this but with squarespace its hard to add code to page level...only site wide is possible. Was curious if there's someone experienced in squarespace and SEO out there that can give some suggestions on how to resolve this problem? thanks

                    Technical SEO | Jul 16, 2017, 4:17 AM | cmjolley
                    0
                  • ericmccarty

                    How much to change to avoid duplicate content?

                    Working on a site for a dentist.  They have a long list of services that they want us to flesh out with text.  They provided a bullet list of services, we're trying to get 1 to 2 paragraphs of text for each. Obviously, we're not going to write this off the top of our heads.  We're pulling text from other sources and trying to rework. The question is, how much rephrasing do we have to do to avoid a duplicate content penalty?  Do we make sure there are changes per paragraph, sentence, or phrase? Thanks! Eric

                    Technical SEO | Mar 20, 2012, 4:58 PM | ericmccarty
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.