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I'm afraid we'd need a little more information to give a good answer. What is the problem exactly; what do you mean by "being flagged as 98% similar in the code"? The HTML source of the two pages is likely to be very similar, but this is to be expected. The only thing "triggering" the duplicate content is the fact that neither page has much in the way of unique text. I don't recommend stuffing lots of text in there, though, if it isn't going to be useful to the user. I think the more important point here, though, is to focus on the real world impact, and not on a score given by some page-similarity-scoring tool. What is the real-world impact? If you're worried just about the score given by a tool then don't be; there will be better places to focus your attention.

Hi Kasy, did you get to the bottom of this?

I would strongly recommend using schema creator or Google data-highlighter or microdatagenerator.com http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=uploaded:8004fd1b864bd1586879eaf3856d1a1c need to get rid of the outdated  data vocabulary http://data-vocabulary.org/product  outdated for http://schema.org/product  works on everything up to date you want the schema to look like this below the format that is universal on all search engines is able to be created with either schema–creator.com or microdatacreator.com Manufactured by: itemprop="name" itemprop="name">Vollrath Model: 40862itemprop="description">Product ID: sku:VOL40862 http://schema-creator.org/ works on Google , bing & Yahoo http://blog.raventools.com/an-seos-guide-to-schema-org/ http://schema-creator.org/product.php works on Google , bing & Yahoo http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/12/introducing-data-highlighter-for-event.html http://www.microdatagenerator.com/ works on Google , bing & Yahoo https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/146750?hl=en works on Google http://www.productontology.org/ http://moz.com/blog/schema-examples http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/googles-data-highlighter-and-a-view-into-the-future-of-seo http://www.searchenginejournal.com/schema-101-how-to-implement-schema-org-markups-to-improve-seo-results/58210/ http://moz.com/webinars/microformats-real-life-use-cases http://searchengineland.com/see-entities-web-page-tools-help-194710 http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/products-and-offers-markup-138d0977 http://www.whoisip.co.za/source/www.etundra.com/restaurant-equipment/refrigeration/display-cases/coutnertop/vollrath-40862-36-inch-cubed-glass-refrigerated-display-cabinet/ or view-source:https://www.etundra.com/restaurant-equipment/refrigeration/display-cases/coutnertop/vollrath-40862-36-inch-cubed-glass-refrigerated-display-cabinet/ itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Product"> 36" Cubed Glass Refrigerated Display CabinetVollrathitemprop="brand" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Brand" itemprop="manufacturer" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"> Manufactured by: itemprop="name" itemprop="name">VollrathModel: 40862itemprop="description">Product ID: sku:VOL408625 based on 5 reviewsitemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer" itemprop="offers" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Offer">itemprop="price" itemprop="price">3,915.80 New [ type: http://schema.org/product property: | url: | Refrigerated Display Cabinet Vollrath | | url: | 36" Cubed Glass Refrigerated Display Cabinet | | name: | 36" Cubed Glass Refrigerated Display Cabinet | | brand: | Item 1 | | brand: | Item 2 | | model: | 40862 | | description: | Product ID: sku:VOL40862 | | productid: | sku:VOL40862 | | aggregaterating: | Item 3 | | offers: | Item 4 | | name: | 36 | | image: | http://schema.org/Product | | url: | https://www.etundra.com/images/products/372x372/restaurant-equipment/refrigeration/display-cases/coutnertop/vollrath-40862-36-inch-cubed-glass-refrigerated-display-cabinet/vol40862-1.jpg | |](https://www.etundra.com/images/products/372x372/restaurant-equipment/refrigeration/display-cases/coutnertop/vollrath-40862-36-inch-cubed-glass-refrigerated-display-cabinet/vol40862-1.jpg) P1gtMht.png ke18lB0.png

I can't speak to the BV implementation aspect as I have no experience with it, however I will echo and agree with Takeshi on the other points as they are the best practice scenario

Regarding query parameters, if you put in a 301 redirect for the main URL, the same URL with query parameters will be redirected as well. So if mysite.com/foo is redirected to mysite.com/bar, then mysite.com/foo?baz=qux will also redirect to mysite.com/bar?baz=qux automatically. As for images, I would avoid redirecting them as that can slow down their load times. Just change all the links to those images in the code to the new URLs.

That's what our next move is.  I'll let you all know what comes of it.  Thanks for the response!

Just to elaborate on the size of the site, we sell about 150,000 products, and many of them can be accessed through multiple categories. Thanks for the responses!

Heather, We didn't end up going with Catch Marketing; in fact, it was a predecessor of mine that originally posted this and our company did end up going with another company that does something quite similar.  I've always seen this as bad practice - doorway pages. One of the first things I did when I started here was get those pages taken down - it just seems way to risky for a company like ours (or any for that matter).  We have more than 60k products online, and to do something shady like this is going to end up doing more harm than good. Anyways, since we took those pages down within the month, I haven't seen any changes really, but I think there are also a lot of other things we need to fix to get things right again - ho-hum.

OK, I am going to say this and I will follow up with you in another format. You must insure that they are not using your name, etc. and simply driving traffic by capturing what you would have already. I think you may be missing something important. I am assuming the sale must take place on your site. (I went to it and drew the assumption).

Yeah I've used the LDA tool in the past and found it helpful as a guide.  If I had to guess I would say LDA is giving their page a higher ranking because they have the line "Mfr. APW WYOTT" in every part listing on this page. Meanwhile we have broken our parts up into subcategories to make it easier for actual users to find what they're looking for, and we therefore lose all of the relevant product content to the subcategories. I think what I'll do is add content below the subcategories on these pages that is both useful to the visitor and keyword rich for the search engines.

This is the challenge about replying to "fast" questions in a Q&A. How thorough of an answer should be provided. I agree with EGOL in that the category and tag pages could and perhaps even should ideally be built out, offer more content and be indexed. Many sites choose not to take this approach and simply keep these pages merely as indexes or organizers. IF you choose to do such, then I maintain my original advice to use the noindex, follow tag. With respect to robots.txt, the best file is a blank one. Many sites use the robots.txt far too much. It should be avoided whenever there is another solution available. In this case, it would be a big mistake to use it.