Duplicate Content | eBay

[joseph.chambers]

My client is generating templates for his eBay template based on content he has on his eCommerce platform.

I'm 100% sure this will cause duplicate content issues. My question is this.. and I'm not sure where eBay policy stands with this but adding the canonical tag to the template.. will this work if it's coming from a different page i.e. eBay?

Update:

I'm not finding any information regarding this on the eBay policy's: http://ocs.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&action=0&searchstring=canonical

So it does look like I can have rel="canonical" tag in custom eBay templates but I'm concern this can be considered: "cheating" since rel="canonical is actually a 301 but as this says: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html it's legitimately duplicate content.

The question is now: should I add it or not?

UPDATE seems eBay templates are embedded in a iframe but the snap shot on google actually shows the template. This makes me wonder how they are handling iframes now. looking at http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-simulator.shtml does shows the content inside the iframe. Interesting.

Anyone else have feedback?

[STPseo]

I am not sure you can control the canonical tag of an eBay page. I think eBay will have the main control... you can maybe add it to the iFrame but I think eBay's headers will be the ones that have dominance.

I also don't think having eBay product pages would be considered duplicate content. We have numerous product feeds going to third party shopping sites and I don't consider this to be duplicate content at all.

However, I am only slightly familiar with eBay. It will be interesting to see other answers on the subject.

[joseph.chambers]

yea me too: Listening to Matt Cutts here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/ If you want to fast forward to: 1:30 and it seems to me that hes saying that you can have a canonical from what I understand: anywhere. Hearing that and wondering how the search engines REALLY interpret iframes ( as they want to read a site more like a human ) how will they handle the canonical.

Sure not 100% of the site actually us a duplicate but the main stuff is. It makes me wonder. I'll really know if I see a backlink from eBay in OSE. ( not saying that that is the goal but the content is ours and if the shoe was on the other foot and we getting penalized..)

[STPseo]

You can have canonical from one domain to another.

I am talking about have the ability to actually control eBay's meta data at the canonical level. They already have canonical tags going back to their own pages and I doubt they would give you control over it. Again, I am not 100% sure but I would be shocked if they gave you control of that field. eBay has its own SEO concerns so I image they would retain control of that field.

I just don't consider a product page on eBay to be a duplicate of a product page on a third party site even if the site were feeding the data to eBay. Your site and eBay are 2 totally separate entities and I don't think these would be considered duplicate pages.

[randfish]

Agree with Stephan here - eBay's extremely unlikely to give you control over the rel=canonical on their product pages, but generally, the content duplication by having the product info on their site shouldn't harm you.

If you're really worried, provide more detail/depth/content on your own site than what you do on eBay, and possibly consider having different title/product name conventions. There's lots of good ways to describe the same product.

[ringochan]

eBay does not care about duplicate content unless copyright involves. Great image and great price is the ebay to sell on ebay.

[Kepass]

Well,

I have client account examined here on MOZ. He's got huge duplicated content and it definitely sounds to me like it is duplicating the content from the site to Ebay.

I'll post back about that, but definitly something to consider. I guess if Google has to choose beetween a site and Ebay... it is going to be tough to fight for SERPS against Ebay.