Very similar entries

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some...

[Darkness]

I have a large site indexed on google however recently I am worried about the low number of pages it will display (when doing a site: search) before showing a message such as :

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 11 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Should I be worried about this?

I think the reason why google thinks there are so many similar pages is because the header is fairly large and is repeated on every page. The main body text is also quite low down in the html as I have a left hand side bar containing additional information and links.

Should I make changes to simplify the header code and make sure the main body text is higher up in the html? Is there anything else I can do?

Would appreciate any suggestions.

[loanuniverse]

Title and Content tags are most likely the culprits. I faced the same problem when I updated a couple of dozen pages and got too lazy to rewrite the "content" meta-tag. The pages got indexed, but were ommited on searches although the actual content was somewhat different.

[t2dman]

No worries when you get this result from a site: command. Since you are not requesting any word query, it shows up the first characters of the text. Since Googles duplicate filter is very sensitive, it sees that all the first are the same, and so applies the filter.

When people are doing normal searches, they are requesting distinct words that will be unique for particular pages on your site, so there will not be the same issue re duplicate filter.

Just make sure that you do have pages optimised for different phrases.

The Google duplicate filter is very powerful. It looks at the query, and will apply the filter across a wide range of sites, if it sees that the same words around a phrase have been repeated across a number of sites, or pages within a site - it can pick up link text in the same place on every page across a site, ... I have not tested the boundaries of the filter like just how many words are required to be the same either side for the filter to be applied, I have just seen it in operation with a number of terms and sites.

So be aware of it, and make sure you work within the filters uncertain boundaries :)