Murdoch - 3:55 pm on Oct 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

I would be interested to know if deep links from outside sites helps protect from this issue

I would have to think that if Google finds a page through an outside link then it would have no choice but to list it. That's why I have hundreds of pages indexed that are almost exactly alike with the exception of a few words and query string c= parameters (outside sites have tracking values to mointor production and traffic).

Also, regarding templates. I have noticed that since most template pages use the same title and desrciption, this can be circumvented by using product names as values at the end of a URL to be dynamically added into the meta tags, thereby producing a "unique" page as far as G is concerned.

Example: www.example.com/widgets/widget.htm?pn=Thick_Blue_Widget the resulting title would start as: Purchase (insert) at Widget Town Today! and end as: Purchase Thick Blue Widget at Widget Town Today!

I have seen this work in establishing enough individuality for G to consider this an autonomous page. Of course the page content itself must also be unique enough but I've found that as long as there are 5 or more sections of the page with differing text (only a sentence or so in each section) then this will do. You might want to do something that automatically generates a description tag this way as well. Make a note that I've only studied this method on authority sites with high rankings.