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It is unusual to endorse one of the shortest answers on the page, but Axel is to-the-point and, IMO, correct in this case. You don't want to paginate too heavily because that creates more clicks to get to all of your products. In fact, Google even recommends using a View All canonical page if it doesn't affect performance (load time) too much.

The first link anchor is what counts so I respectfully disagree with dittoeffect, unless you were to link to the image on the product page from the image on the category page using a Named Anchor hashtag (could be a good thing to test).

You don't want a bunch of iframes on your category page either. Keep it simple. You run an honest eCommerce site, not an uber-competitive affiliate website where you have to put links into a redirect script that goes through a directory that's blocked in the robots.txt file, etc...

Make the alt text and link text the same unless you are testing the named anchor link idea mentioned above.

And as Alan Gray said, test. These are all just opinions based on experience until you test.

Hello Ewanr,

Please see section five on this page: http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188494#US

I have pulled out the quote that I think answers your question. Although Google seems to cater their answer toward apparel and accessories, you can use variant attributes for other types of items:

"We define variants as a group of identical products that only differ by the attributes ‘color’, ‘material’, ‘pattern’, or ‘size’...

If you don't include variant attributes in your feed, you shouldn't submit several variants of the same product as separate listings (ex: the same product in different colors, sizes). These items will be considered as duplicates which is against our Program Policies."

That document goes on to explain how to submit variant data.

So what I would suggest is to submit them as variants each with a unique ID (e.g. SKU) and the same "Item group ID".

I hope this has answered your question. If not, please let me know.

Regards,

Everett

Hello Donford,

The easiest thing to do if you are really only concerned about providing a link to more information for the distributor's visitors is to nofollow that link. This way you're not going to chance getting "dinged" for adding 10,000 links all at once.

If you have a few product pages on the manufacturing site that you'd like to improve you can selectively remove the nofollow tag from the link pointing to those pages from the distributor side, but I wouldn't recommend 10,000 followable links from a single domain all at once.

Questions like this are always difficult to answer because Google doesn't treat every site the same. A well-known brand with thousands of high quality links and a trusted, established site that has been in operation for a long time with good user metrics, and has never been penalized can get away with a LOT more than a relatively unknown brand or an "average" site. That is why I recommend starting with the nofollowed links and, if you want, testing the waters by allowing a few of them to be followed.

Please let me know if you feel your question has still not been adequately answered.

Cheers,

Everett

Hello Jannkuzel,

That is correct.

Some 3rd party review sites get around this by placing the content on your site in an iFrame. What this would essentially mean is that they get credit for the content and you don't. So while that may be a good experience for your users, having the content on your page in an iFrame would not help your SEO directly.

If the content is NOT in an iFrame and is crawlable on the page (just search for a snippet of the comments/reviews in your source code) then you would have a duplicate content problem with that same content showing up on the 3rd party's website.

An ideal situation would be for you to be the only site that shows the reviews and comments since they are about your products, after all.

Good luck!

Everett