Shopify duplicate content issue

[devoted2vintage]

We recently moved out site to shopify but now have a duplicate content issue as we have the same products in different collections. I have added canonical code to get rid of this but my webmaster tools still shows hundreds of duplicate pages. How can I tell if the code I added is working? How long will it take for google to recognise this and drop the duplicates from their index and is this likely to have a significant impact on SERPS? Our we page is www.devoted2vintage.co.uk. Thanks Paul

[ORob]

How long ago did you add the canonical tags?

When you have this type of situation you can either 301 or Canonical the duplicate pages - 301 adds the value of perhaps better user tracking as all the traffic organic or not will funnel to the desired page.

Google will have to cycle through all of these pages, hit the canonical tag, make the association, and update your webmaster tools report. Depending on the authority and crawl rate of your site this could take a matter of days, to a number of weeks for this entire process to run through. If you have the tags set up already its unlikely that you'll see much of a negative impact, but once complete you may notice better indexing of your desired pages and hopefully better traction on conversion.

You can tell that the code is working if you go to the live code of the undesired page, check the source and make sure the canonical points to the desired page. After that it's up to Google to do its thing.

[devoted2vintage]

I added the canonical tag about a week ago. Unfortunately theis code wasn't in place when it was first indexed. When google crawls all the pages and makes the association will the be removed as duplicates in google webmaster tools?

[ORob]

Not 100% positive if google will remove these from the webmaster tool report. I suggest doing an exact phrase match query, using quotes, around content from the duplicate pages. If only your desired page shows up, the canonical tags are probably functioning.

Do you need to keep both versions of the pages?

[BeytzNet]

I noticed that on most product pages you do have lots of content repeating itself.

For example - PRODUCT DETAILS, SIZE GUIDE etc.

The product pages are relatively thin with content, and the repeated content (duplicated) is larger than the "new" content. Maybe you should change those to images...?