Can internal duplicate content cause issues?

[DaWillow]

Hello all mozzers - has anyone used nitrosell? we use them only because their inventory connects to ours epos point but because they have thousands of 301s on our domain we are getting duplicate content because different sizes of products (we sell womenswear) are creating seperate URLS so we are duplicating both content and URLS - im curious as to whether anyone has experienced simillar problems that have affected their SERPS?

Best wishes,

Chris

[softclick]

Yes! In the past I have always tried to work around such issues. But in the last few months I have made good experiences in contacting product developers. And in most cases, they react and improve their software. Have a nice day. Sunny regards from Germany, Sebastian

[DaWillow]

Hi Sebastian yes we are very aware of this issue, we need to flag this back up with the ecommerce engine as a matter of urgence! many thanks for your assistance.

[softclick]

You have to ask yourself, if there are enough searches for "XY size z"?

If not -> I would collect the link power in one page per product.

But as you say, it is bad, if the listed size is out of stock. But is it not possible, that the visitor can chose his size in a pull down menu?

If you can not change the "size" on the product page, you do allready have a problem.

Imagine me, searching for "product XY" and landing on "XS" instead of my size (L). I am lost

[DaWillow]

thank you for your response Sebastian, the issue is the duplicate URLs are the same product but in different sizes, so i dont know if it would be wise to add a canonical to these pages as google might index a product which size is out of stock. I am not sure why nitrosell is built like this!

[softclick]

Internal duplicate content can hurt your rankings. You waste link power on the copies, that should promote the original.

If your software generates variations, i would insert a rel=canical pointing from all those variations to the orginial.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

[jim_cetin]

No,I haven't used it.

Nitrosell: markets its world-class eCommerce solutions primarily through a worldwide network of reseller partners.....

How about asking the support what they can do for you in that case, maybe you have miss-configured the app etc.? OR the product has bugs?

Maybe you have url parameters (/womenshat?xy paramater12-12433) that shows up as duplicate content OR you have different pictures on the same URL +parameter with no content etc..

In general it is very hard to give you advise,with the given info.