Does pages with same products but with different orders count as duplication?

[vuquangchien]

Let's say I got an e-commerce website. In that website I have 3 different pages:

• New products: display paged products order by created time descendingly
• Hot products: display paged products order by viewed
• Random products: display paged products randomly
  So are those 3 pages should be considered duplicated content? Should I canonicalize them to New product page (with paging), or should I create a new page without paging and point all of 3 pages above to that page (this page doesn't make sense from user experience but look good for crawler)?

[LesleyPaone]

On the 3 pages, how many of the products are the same? Is MOZ's crawler picking them up as duplicate content?

[Chris.Menke]

vuquanchien,

From your explanation, it sounds like those three pages list exactly the same products but in different orders. If that's the case, I think it would be worth while to canonicalize them to a single page. Keep in mind that just because your ecommerce platform allows you to do certain things, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should do all/any of them.  If you only have a page worth of products but you create three pages out of them in order to show different sorts, it may not be necessary.  Splitting up the page into alternative categories may be a better idea.

[vuquangchien]

All of my products are the same, have the same layout, same display, same amount of product. The only difference is the order that the product is displayed.

[vuquangchien]

Thank Chris,

One more thing, if I do canonicalization, should I create a page without paging and point all the other page (for example: New products - Page 1 of 2, New products - Page 2 of 2, Hot products - Page 1 of 2)  to that no-pagination-page so it would look like this:

• New products - Page 1 of 2 ---- canonicalize ----> All products page without pagination
• New products - Page 2 of 2 ---- canonicalize ----> All products page without pagination
• Hot products - Page 1 of 2 ---- canonicalize ----> All products page without pagination
• Hot products - Page 2 of 2 ---- canonicalize ----> All products page without pagination

And should I still do the rel=next, rel=prev on the pages that have pagination (New products, Hot products)?

[Chris.Menke]

Unless your category pages pull together a group of products that formulate some sort of unique point of view that benefits the sales process, then there's no real reason for your category pages to stand out, in which case, minimize their overall impact on search and focus on making your individual product pages stand out in search.

Do you actually get so many return visitors coming to the site looking for what's new since the last time they were there that you need a "new products" category? How about "hot products", are visitors indicating that they are at your site to find out what others are actively buying?  I wonder.

If you were able to come up with categories that actually add value to the visitor experience, I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't have this canonicalization  issue or this pagination issue.  In the mean time, what you describe might be the best way of doing it.