Duplicate content penalties - MULTI STORES - B2B consumables to 5 industry segments

[craigar]

Is there a solution to our situation without getting bad duplicate content penalties? or on balance, is it worth risking some duplicate content penalties?

We are about to launch 5 multistores with almost the same products on each store, but with different videos/news etc.  (www.nopcommerce.com)

Our goal was not to increase google exposure, but to be specialists in the industries.   So that Foodservice customers can have a 'foodservice' experience on the FOODSERVICE webstore, and see a unique foodservice blog and foodservice videos (and likewise the HEALTHCARE, INDUSTRIAL, FACILITIES sites).  The main store will have all the products on it. The multistoreS will each have about half the products.

Can you clarify if the panda will actually drop rankings on ALL our stores, if we have 5 stores with duplicate content?  Would it be WORSE, having 5, than having 1?

How would using canonical tags affect this outcome?  Can they be applied per category?

ANOTHER QUESTION:

For getting google results to land on the correct ministore/multistore:   (ie making industrial product searches land on the INDUSTRIAL STORE even though they exist on several stores):  Would the canonical tags help with this too?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Craig,

Canonicals are most definately your friend here.

Without looking at things in more detail, you would be using cross-domain canonicals. I would start by having a read here on Google.

What you need to be doing is choosing the main domain and then having any duplication on your other store sites point back to the corresponding page on that main site.

This will tell Google that you know you have duplication and that this is the fix for it. Google will not penalise you for doing this so there is no need to worry about Panda.

It does sound like there is some planning needed to decide on a sensible structure - have you throught about going down the sub-domain route? This will help you retain branding but retain a separate site and experience for visitors.

-Andy

[craigar]

Thanks very much for the great answer Andy.  Really appreciate it.

Regarding the sub-domain versus separate domain route, it was a hard decision.  We want each of the four websites to feel like definitive specialist businesses, and in that case treat the 'main website' as more of a 'corporate site/main site'.  I guess it could be regarded that each website could almost be 'sold off' as a separate business.  i understanding your comments about strengthening the brand.  All the url have our main name as part of the url, and our logo is on each site, along with a different colour scheme.  or did you mean more that Google will give much more punch to the subdomain option?

The information in your google webmasters link about canonicals is from 2009, and very informative and relevent.. I guess it is still current?  The main website of the group has about 10000 different products on it, and each product/sku has a different url. Would this mean that i would have to create a canonical for up nearly 10000 entries x 4 websites, back to a preferred url?  Can I instead do Product Category urls?  (i would love the option to send the category "Bandages" to the healthcare site by canonicals, even though it is on 3 of the sites)

Is there an efficient way to do the canonical in bulk?  or should i just concentrate on the top selling products? What penalties could apply because i don't manage to get them all done in a timely manner?

Thanks in Advance!!