Duplicate content because of Virtuemart Product Category SEF alias?

[mikehoutsma]

Hello all,

I have a webshop www.europebathroom.com and I have a question about duplicate content. I have for example the category Showers and subcategory Shower trays.

Respective links:
europebathroom.com/showers
europebathroom.com/showers/shower-trays

However, the SEF alias for the subcategory Shower trays is 'shower-trays', so when I enter europebathroom.com/shower-trays I also get an overview of the products.

This is duplicate content right? The same counts for all other categories and sub-categories and even individual products (e.g. europebathroom.com/showertrayproduct instead of europebathroom.com/showers/shower-trays/showertrayproduct).

Is there a way to prevent this effect? Or any thoughts / experience with this matter? Please let me know! Thank you in advance.

Kind regards, Mike

[AH]

The product has a canonical url which will reduce duplicate content

If I do visit the url:-
http://www.europebathroom.com/shower-trays/villeroy-boch-futurion-flat-shower-tray-140x90-cm-detail

VM uses a canonical reference which shows the correct category:-

 <link href="/showers/shower-trays/villeroy-boch-futurion-flat-shower-tray-140x90-cm-detail" rel="canonical" />

However if I try this with my setup and remove the main category and just leave the sub-category in the url - I get 404 errors


PS:- Could this be to do with the dj-menu component?

[jjk]

This is duplicate content right?

Not really in the sense that Google would penalize your website for that.
Have a look here: http://www.theshortcutts.com/ and filter the videos for 'duplicate'.

A text explanation from Google is here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en
Right at the beginning it says: "Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include: ....Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs"

[mikehoutsma]

Thanks for the information!

No link on the site links to a product without /category/subcategory/, so the chance is small that a visitor gets the 'wrong' page on his screen. So you suggest not to worry about this ''duplicate'' content, also because the canonical tag fixes it? I will also watch the videos btw

However if I try this with my setup and remove the main category and just leave the sub-category in the url - I get 404 errors

I don't understand what you mean with 'my setup', could you explain the error you get  ? Is it bad?

offtopic:
And what about text on product pages (like 'description, Serie, Brand, Shape, Color') etc. I have hundreds of these same product pages, only with different products, is that bad for pagerank when it comes to duplicate content?

Thanks in advance! Kind regards, Mike

[jjk]

So you suggest not to worry about this ''duplicate'' content,

Yes

And what about text on product pages (like 'description, Serie, Brand, Shape, Color') etc. I have hundreds of these same product pages, only with different products, is that bad for pagerank when it comes to duplicate content?

No. Basically that is similar to using Microdata to structure your site for the search engines (what Google suggests to do).

[AH]

I meant that if I remove the category and just leave the  subcategory reference from one of MY urls, I do not get the product appearing.  I get redirected to my 404 Url not found page.