Could this be seen as content duplication?

150 pages with unique, though few details

[roseplant]

I run a website with information on different 'widgets'. I previously listed around 50 widgets with detailed info on each - long descriptions, photos, etc. Now I have compiled a full database of all the widgets on offer (around 150) and am thinking of adding them to the site, as individual pages. But these new pages won't have as detailed descriptions, or unique photos. Basically, each page will have the widget's name and 5 other unique characteristics of each particular widget (lets say color, size, cost,weight,packaging). Is this enough information to not be considered duplicate pages by Google?

BTW I hope you understand what I'm saying here - it would be much easier of course to give the actual product but I've been told to avoid this here in the past so am substituting widgets instead.

[tedster]

I've just been studying a similar situation this afternoon, albeit at a larger scale. My best guess, given what I see currently, is that you will fine as long as you get unique title tags and meta descriptions in there, along with some degree of unique content.

Also, make very sure that there is only one url that will result in a 200 OK server response for each unique content source -- no different query strings generating the exact same thing from different directions. This, more than "near duplicate pages" is the cause of duplicate troubles right now.

By the way, you can forget that common phrase duplicate content "penalty" -- the worst that you should see is a filter, and not a penalty. And if you do see that your new pages get spidered but then not returned in the appropriate search results, then find a way to up the percentage of unique content for each variation.

[lammert]

I have had a similar situation on one of my sites--many similar, but not duplicate--pages. Many of those pages went URL only in Google. After I added unique meta descriptions and some unique text to the pages they all reappeared. So to answer your question: If pages are almost similar Google might treat them as duplicate and remove some from the SERPs.

You can also see it the other way: what is the added value of having 150 pages in the index with almost identical content and which will probably trigger on the same or almost the same keywords? Having unique and different pages not only increases the number of indexed pages, but also increases the number of keyword combinations that will match a page from your site. So differentiation is a win-win situation.

[roseplant]

Well that's good news!

But is there something to be feared from adding around 150 pages, plus perhaps 20 for navigation, to what is currently a 100 page site?

[Halfdeck]

As tedster suggested, the key is to generate unique title/description and depending on how safe you want to play it, eliminate as many repeating text in the title/description as possible. (e.g. "<title>blue widget - buy your widget at widget.com</title>" and "<title>red widget - buy your widget at widget.com</title>" are identical save the first word).

[roseplant]

Thanks Halfdeck but I understand that part. Now my concern is the safety of adding 150 extra pages *suddenly*, almost tripling the size of the size in one go - how will the search engines react?

[dmje]

Anyone care to speculate on the percentage of difference needed in the content of pages to avoid the duplicate content issue?

Our website sells many different products and in many instances we are given canned descriptions by the supplier which we try to modify as best we can but some of the descriptions are only a few lines and describe the product very concisely and it is difficult to change the description very much at all.

We make sure that each page whether it be a product page or a large image page has a different title and description meta tags, which even that can be difficult at times when you have many different colors of the same product.

The reason for this question is because I used a similar page checking tool against my site and another site that I know that sells the same particular product and found that even with the title tags and meta descriptions being different and the product descriptions being as different as we can make them, the checker showed an 85% similarity between the product pages, whereas, the large image pages only show a 12% similarity and I assume this due to there being much less text on that type of page with the only thing most likely being identical is the photo.

I looked closely at both the other sites product page and mine for that item and our content is similar yet different, there are only so many ways you can describe a child's trike......short of completely doing away with the canned descriptions and attempting to write my own I am at a loss as what to do.

Could any of this similarity be due to the fact that both sites happen to use the same hosting company and both domains reside on the same server at the hosting company?

Sorry for the long rambling post, but I do not want to beat my head against the wall and spend hours and hours and hours trying to make my product pages completely different from the others out there that sell the same items when the best I can get is a 15-20% difference if that isnt enough.