Avoid duplicate content penalties?

[clawler]

Say for example a site sells about 5000 different models of widgets. There are about 30 different manufacturers for these widgets. The models made by each manufacturer vary only slightly from one another which means that the description for each model will be very similar except for maybe a few words. Describing each widget accurately will produce hundreds of nearly identical descriptions within my site.

I want to provide accurate content and descriptions for my customers but wish to avoid duplicate content penalties. Any suggestions?

[Bewenched]

I'm dealing with the same issue myself with a large ecomm site. I'm considering putting the description in a iframe .. i'm just not sure how the SE's will handle it .. if they will spider it separately from the page or not.

Just how far can the duplicate content go .. I mean there is only so many ways to give your customers the detailed information they need.

say you have 5 blue widgets all by same manufactuer, all have same basic function yet they each may be 1 millimeter difference in size. Will that one factor negate the dupe content? Is it really dupe content if all the item numbers are different?

I'd love to hear from one of the SE techs on this.

[stapel]

I think duplicate content penalies apply more to content, by which I mean "articles": lengthy paragraphs meant to convey opinion (such as op-ed pieces), instruction (classroom lessons), conversation (blogs or forums), current-events information (news articles), and the like.

It wouldn't seem like terse item listings, something like "Widget #123456X, red, 13mm, copper", would be something that the search engines would feel a need to guard against.

I could be wrong, of course....

Eliz.