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View Full Version : Concerned about breadcrumbs and duplicate content



Ardent
08-05-2006, 09:31 AM
If I have a site where items, pages, etc can belong to multiple categories and therefore I may end up with three different URLs for exactly the same page ( aside from the different breadcrumbs ) does this count as "duplicate content" ( sorry I have only recently begun to read up on SEO stuff ).

If it is duplicate content, how does the site get penalised, do the duplicated pages just get penalised or the entire site and in what way?

Finally is there anything I can do about this other than drop the breadcrumbs or go to static crumbs ( i.e - make the crumbs follow a primary category rather than the users path ).

Thanks for any advice.

Chris
08-05-2006, 09:35 AM
Yes, it could be duplicate content. What'd likely happen is that only the best URL will be chosen for inclusion.

The downside of all of this is that really you're splitting your promotional efforts among 2 urls. If its one article but at 2 urls then it'll only get half as much link popularity as it would as one url since it will be split among the 2.

So yes, work out a method so that you have one URL per piece of content and no more.

For instance, on this site....

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/search_engine_friendly_urls/

Notice that article has 2 parent categories, but I do not put the category in the URL, I just use a generic "article" in the URL.