Another duplicate content question

[tkroll]

I have a web site selling widgets. There are many different widget categories. Under each category is a number of pages with widgets in the category. On each page is photos of the widget, its specific details, and text describing each widgets' properties, history, etc.

This descriptive text will be the same on each individual widget page within the category and makes up a bulk of the page content. (The text explains the category in general, which applies to each widget in the category.) The rest is links--some static, some change on each load.

This text is essential for the each page and meant to sell the item not help ranking (well, not mostly).

I'm worried about setting off the duplicate content sirens. Any advice?

[Wizard]

So what's the difference between widgets from the same category? The photo, the serial number, perhaps color? Why are you going to make separate pages? You could switch these details with javascript on one page. And noone wants to see in Google results several almost identical pages, so of course there will be duplicate content filtering involved. Spamming Google with many similiar pages is a poor way to win your position.

Make as many separate pages as you can with unique text content. If you want to show more products, use javascript to switch content on one page. Or that's the way I would try to deal with it.

[tkroll]

Thanks for your response.

These pages are for unique items in my product catalog. They have nothing in common expect being the same type of item. The text gives type specific information. All details are different: size, shape, color, etc. These are also included on the page.

Does it not make sense to deliver a page for an item meeting specific customer requirements in the SERPs? I sell unique items and would like each on to be found.

Thanks!

[Natashka]

and what about users profiles? if I have a forum, or site where ppl register and each member has a profile, and I have like thousands of those profiles, is it considered "spam"?

this board doesn't have a memberlist, but many boards have one (like almost all phpBB), which SE love to spider. And I don't really want to remove my memberlist link, I want ppl to see it. Can my site be penalized because of these pages with profiles? Those are all similar dynamic pages... you know, many folks usually leave fields blank, so they all look identical, only username at the top is different. But they are not created for SE in the first place.

[Wizard]

Google has its own rules, and we can't change it. If you have very similiar items and insist on making separate pages for them, you have to modify significant percent of the text to avoid duplicate filtering.

If someone searches for specific keyword, for example username, only one page will show up. If someont searches for keyword present on many pages, even if no duplicate content took place, only two pages per domain will show up in results. If there's duplicate penalty, there will be one page shown.