Multiple paths to pages

Is this a disastrous site organisation?

[Dave McClure]

I organised a poetry collection this way - index.htm has links to index_by_title.htm, index_first_line.htm, index_by_form.htm. Each of these three pages has a link to each individual poem1.htm, poem2.htm, poem3.htm etc. Then, each poem page has links back to the main index and to the three sub-index pages. My question - this arrangement makes perfect sense to any poetry reader, but does mean that there are multiple paths to every page on the site. Will this be interpreted by search engines as duplicate (or triplicate) content? In general, should there only be one navigation path from index.htm to any individual page?

[LifeinAsia]

This about it logically, if different links to the same page was considered duplicate content, NO ONE would want links to their site!

It's only duplicate content if the same content can be referenced by more than one URL. For example, if you have the same page that is linked to by testpage.htm and TestPage.htm and TESTPAGE.htm, that's considered 3 pages by SEs (even though it's the same page on Windoze boxes). It's more of a problem for dynamic sites, where the same content may be shown by /products/widgets/green/ and widgets.php?color=green and speacials.php?type=widgets&color=green

[jtara]

What is an SE to think if you are more concerned about SEs than with your users?

Design for your users.

[tedster]

Other have said it, but I'm going to try to say it again, in "my kind" of language.

The concern is not multiple click paths to the same content. The concern is more than one ADDRESS for the same content.

What you describe does not sound like the second situation. You can create three "index_by" pages that do not have substantially identical content, even if they all do link to the same poems.

[Dave McClure]

Thanks All -
I was reading up about duplicate content on another part of this forum and was getting a bit confused! As for designing for the users, of course I agree, but not if the design prevents potential users from finding the site by search.

[mack]

Lets imaging your pages are towns and your links are roads. A town can have many roads leading to it but it is still only one town. In fact the more roads lead to it the more traffic can drive in. Sounds good huh! :)

The same is true on the web. to many links will not harm you, but only link where appropriate. If you think a internal link will benefit your users then use it.

Mack.

[LifeinAsia]

Lets imaging your pages are towns and your links are roads. A town can have many roads leading to it but it is still only one town. In fact the more roads lead to it the more traffic can drive in. Sounds good huh!

Good analogy, but you need to follow it a bit more. If you can follow 2 different roads from point A to point B, the SEs will index route 1 and make route 2 supplemental. The duplicate content issue would be something like having a direct route and having the same route with a detour around the block (maybe a little hard to imagine without mapping it...)- with gratuitous detours and backtracking, you could have an almost infinite number of ways to get from point A to point B.

If I want to go from point A to point B, I don't want to wade through 40 pages of different directions showing me indirect ways, backtracks, and detours. The SEs understand that, so the indirect/duplicate routes will be pushed down in the rankings.

[Pibs]

I have a question on these lines - my WYSIWYG editor creates 2 html pages, one for explorer and one for netscape.

Would SE's consider that duplicate?

Very few surfers seem to be using netscape as far as I can tell from my logs. Should I kill all the "_nn4" stuff?

P.

[Pibs]

Never mind, killed em all.

Delete, delete, delete...

:o)

P