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E-commerce websites have that in common that they present information in a dynamic way. That means that the content may be served via multiply number of different URL’s with different parameters which may cause a duplicate content issue.

For example:

http://www3.jcpenney.com/jcp/X6.aspx?DeptID=62438&CatID=63100&GrpTyp=P RD&ItemID=14ad0e8&attrtype=&attrvalue=&CMID=62438%7c63096&Fltr=&Srt=&Q L=F&IND=2&CmCatId=62438|63096|63100

and

http://www3.jcpenney.com/jcp/X6.aspx?ItemID=14ad0e8&ItemTyp=G&GrpTyp=P RD&ShowMenu=T&ShopBy=0&SearchString=Secure+Sleeper&RefPage=SearchDepar tment.aspx&s4PageSize=15&CmCatId=searchresults&Search1Prod=True

are the same product but accessed via different way: once by going through the categories tree and another way by searching for that product with build-in search engine. And as you can see those two URL’s have different parameters (everything that follows http://www3.jcpenney.com/jcp/X6.aspx? is a parameter), yet they present the same product (content).

And that is the problem. Visitors can reach the same product, but depending on the route they take, they will end up on different URL address. For search engines it is a duplicate content.

How to fight with e-commerce duplicate content issue

The best solution would be the use of static URL addresses instead of dynamic ones. That would make sure that each URL serves a certain product and that this is the only URl serving the same product.

That is the best solution, but hard to achieve. In reality, a website with tenths of thousands items could not create a static url for each product. Daily changes to the item availability, new products, special offers, limited series and so on would make this task very hard to achieve.

So how to solve it?

• Remove unnecessary parameters - that will lower the distinct number of URl’s presenting the same content and help search engines spider the website
• Create a sitemap - create a sitemap (html and xml versions) and present the URL’s you would like to present your products at. That will help sarch engines determine the “correct” URl address and remove the other possible duplicated URL’s with different parameters.
• Implement mod-rewrite - rewrite all possible URL’s to static ones
• 301 redirect - redirect the duplicated URL’s to one version, so even if visitors reach your product via different ways they will end up at the same URL

How Google handles various parameters causing duplicate content issue:

1. When we [Google] detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.
2. We select what we [Google] think is the “best” URL to represent the cluster in search results.
3. We [Google] then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

Consolidating properties from duplicates into one representative URL often provides users with more accurate search results- Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Conclusion

If you can, do not use URL parameters as it can cause a duplicate content issues. If you must, try to limit the number of parameters you use to absolute minimum. Also create a sitemap with preferred URL addresses to help search engines determine which URL to keep in its indexes and present to users.

The use of different URL parameters causing that different URL’s show the same content is very dangerous, especially to large websites with lots of items. So take it seriously and plan your URl structure before you make the website. That can help you save time and nerves.