Can Google see difference between a category and a product page?

[elmoes]

I have a question about Product vs Category URLs

Is it necessary that the product URL and the category URL are different? Is it essential to Google to define which is which?
Example, you are selling a yellow fish

www.site.com/yellow-fish (category page where you post all the yellow fishes)
www.site.com/fish1 (Productpage where you sell the fish)
www.site.com/fish2

or
www.site.com/category/yellow-fish
www.site.com/category/fish1
www.site.com/product/fish2

Does Google need to know the difference? Or will it clasify that /yellow-fish is also a product we sell?
Is it essential that you put /Category and /Product in a URL?

[cr1m]

Depends on the content of the page - if the page lists several products from one category then Google should understand that it is a category page; if the page contains details on specific item with an option to buy that item, it should understand it is a product page, regardless of the URL.
I wouldn't add /category and /product subfolders, because in my opinion these don't add any value, and the visitors should understand if it's a category or product page from the URL. But if you have products where it isn't understandable from the first second, maybe you should add these.

[tangor]

Might want to re-examine your hierarchy. If you have that many (as in the OP) you might be over-doing it.

Home
-- Category (and sufficient content to explain)
---- Product (description, and link to cart)
------ Significant Variant of Product (which has to be VERY significant)

That should do it.

As for yellow fishes, g (and most SEs worth their salt) deal with SITE CONTENT, ie, what's on the pages, not the URLS ... Code your hierarchy to what makes sense to YOU as webmaster. After all, you will have to maintain it. G will read any URL you give it, but it returns SERPS based on CONTENT, not URLS.

[dmjosh]

Google will read all those keywords in your url, as well as your content on your pages, and your Backlink pages, of course, and rank you accordingly. However stuffing more words in your your url this might not help you rank for what you want, it might be over optimization. depends on your competition and what main keywords you are going for.

[tangor]

Keywords in urls died an agonizing death (for some webmasters back in the day) quite some time ago.

Keep in mind, if your ecom users have to click more than three times to get their product AND checkout, you have too many pages in the way of doing business.