Duplicate Content

[theLotter]

Many of the pages on my site are similar in structure/content but not exactly the same.

What amount of content should be unique for Google to not consider it duplicate? If it is something like 50% unique would it be preferable to choose one page as the canonical instead of keeping them both as separate pages?

[rasmusbang]

I am also very interested in hearing any information about a "good" percentage. We also have pages with no to much content leading to the menus and footer being the larger part of the content of the page. This marks the pages as duplicates.

Despite also searching for an answer, I can give a little input.

If your pages do not have the same content, however Google/SEOmoz labels them as duplicates, you should not just add the canonical link. Not if the pages do not have the same topic or compete for the same keyword.

I have been told that marking up the pages correctly will give a better crawl from google. If one uses the markups from schema.org, one should be able to mark up the menu as a menu, footer as a footer, content as content - in a way such that Google looks at the actual content and not the layout and menus.

Hope this was of some help.

-Rasmus