How much duplication is too much?

[Tonearm]

Certain products of mine have similar attributes, so I include the same sentence in each of their descriptions. The duplicated sentences are less than 20 words, and there is at least as much unique content in the same paragraph, but could Google detect that as duplicate content?

[TomO]

Tonearm,
Generally with product descriptions you are ok. Here is a quote from the G webmaster help center:

"Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:

* Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
* Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
* Printer-only versions of web pages"

You can read the full text on duplicate content here: [google.com...]

TomO

[Quadrille]

Take a step back and look at the whole page.

If that's OK, chances are there's no problem.
That's assuming the page is more than two paras of 'page-specific' content.

If the page is very heavy with 'shared code' and very light on 'unique', there may be a problem.

eg loads of identical navigation, contact info, 'about' stuff and promos etc and just a couple of paras on the 'featured widget'

[netmeg]

I kind of suspect it boils down to percentages, but I of course have no idea what those might be. I keep playing with it myself; I seem to have some pages that teeter back and forth.