Duplicate Content: Is a product feed/page rolled out across subdomains deemed duplicate content?

[iam-sold]

A company has a TLD (top-level-domain) which every single product:

• company.com/product/name.html

The company also has subdomains (tailored to a range of products) which lists a choosen selection of the products from the TLD - sort of like a feed:

• subdomain.company.com/product/name.html

The content on the TLD & subdomain product page are exactly the same and cannot be changed - CSS and HTML is slightly differant but the content (text and images) is exactly the same!

My concern (and rightly so) is that Google will deem this to be duplicate content, therfore I'm going to have to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of all subdomain pages, pointing to the original product page on the TLD. Does this sound like the correct thing to do? Or is there a better solution?

Moving on, not only are products fed onto subdomain, there are a handfull of other domains which list the products - again, the content (text and images) is exactly the same:

• other.com/product/name.html

Would I be best placed to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of the product pages on other domains, pointing to the original product page on the actual TLD?

Does rel cannonical work across domains?

Would the product pages with a rel cannonical tag in the header still rank?

Let me know if there is a better solution all-round!

[danwebman]

I only use canolonical links on the same domain as your telling google which is a master page. If you use them accross domains I don't think it would pan out very well for the site giving away it's content google juice.

I'd like to know the colution to this if anyone has got anything to add, as I also have a site in Ireland which sells the same as the site in the UK. Luckily for me the majority of the contnent isn't duplicate.

[iam-sold]

Having unique content is not a visable option in this instance!

You mentioned that using canonical links will work to a certain degree - can you expand on this?

[danwebman]

Duplicate content is evil, in Google eyes.

Imagine your Google, What Google would like to do is index as fewer pages as possible and end up with the fewest possible number of results. Meaning that the results are specific to the users requirements.

OK, so when you add duplicate content onto your site or sub-domain you are making Google's job harder and therefore they will penalise you for that. Using Canonical links will work to a certain degree. But not as well as unique relevant content.

We have a range of product which is the best in the world made by a company called SKF. It's the humble bearing. However every man and their web developer add content direct from the SKF website (including my company!! DOH) this means that we will never be anywhere for the word bearing as it gets hidden in all of the duplicate content and if they haven't already Google may even drop our page.

It's a constant battle for me, and should also be for you. Unique content is the way to go.