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Go with David's method, or a hybrid. Present them useable text and ask that they put that on their sites and if they won't then ask they they use canonical or noindex directives.

Are these dropshippers people who have to obey by your agreements in order to continue doing business with you? Would it hurt your business to create a requirement that they either create unique content or have their pages use the noindex code to prevent google from finding the dupe?

Do most of your dropshippers get their traffic via Organic Search? Or are they using other advertising sources?

It will vary per niche and geography, so in general no I cannot say.

With some phrases, the industry, and language people use will affect the volume. I would say find a set of local variations that you can rank for (perhaps a bit longer tailed) and compare them... but either way optimizing for both can provide good value.

Your 404's should filter out over time as long as you are not linking to them or listing them in your XML sitemap. It can take quite a while. 301 them if you have proper pages to do so, but if you don't - just let it play out.

Google webmaster's stance on this is that 404's are natural, and they are more of an awareness alert, than a huge issue. If you see a spike make sure it is supposed to be happening.

Target both.

In most cases like this, you'll find that people search in both ways. Google used to find them synonymous in a way and provide the same results, but don't now. Difficulty will depend on competition and your domain authority. Watch both keywords and write your text in a natural varied direction that also includes an exact match or two of each.

Yes, that is a super logical way of thinking about it. Good work!

Big question. Exact match KW domains aren't quite as valuable as they were in some instances. I would lean toward using a branded domain, as it will be more cohesive with your overall marketing. It may also help the user in that they could have an easier time remembering your URL which could increase direct visits, and you may get higher CTR via organic due to recognition.

Ultimately, yes I believe it does come down to content - but why not use what works best for your overall marketing scheme...

There are no guarantees, as you know. I would be weary of that strategy long term as I mentioned. If it doesn't raise a flag with Google now, it could someday.

I think you raise a great question.

The only way I'd probably consider a directory at this point is if they are directly related to my niche AND they provide more value in general site content combined with an active social media community. I would want to watch their social media and make sure that people are actually using the directory/site. Google is about users, and for the most part - who is using directories unless they are undoubtedly adding value to a niche.

I have seen this implemented many times. It seems as though as long as you make it clear to the user that there is more text for them to interact with, that you may be ok. I can't say I've seen anyone be directly penalized for it.

With that said, I am not the biggest fan of it - and I haven't found a reason to need to use it yet.

Are you saying you lost rankings? With a redesign I would examine the old code compared to the new code. I would check the page speed. I would examine how the text was placed before to how it is now.

Use the "fetch as googlegbot" option in webmaster tools to make sure they are accessing all text. Do some exact phrase match queries to make sure they are relating that text to your site in search. There may be other things in the redesign that could impact your rankings, but ultimately how likely is a user to expand that text? Would you? If Google is sophisticated enough to recognize that (likely) and notices that no one is interacting with that text - then they may not use it in relevancy.

Personally, I would test both ways. A lot of SEO value can be found in the long tail, and when someone gets super specific often times they are ready to buy. When I am specific I often find Ebay's search results pages coming up.

For ebay it looks like, your example, these search results act much like a category for a user. If I was looking for Gibson Les Paul, it wouldn't be a bad user experience for me to land on a page full of those guitars. Each item on that page is likely unique and gives me more options. Now if the search was for something different - like a website that only sold unscented white candles, I may not want to land on those results in which case I might go with your other method.

No worries Kyu! Just a funny thing about the internet

Sounds like you are doing some great digging today and are being smart about it. I hope it resolves your issues.

Thanks for being thoughtful.

Interesting that someone would take the time to thumbs down my post.

That kind of behavior definitely gives me less desire to help people out.

Canonical tends to be the easiest/quickest method to address these issues. The main difference is that with a 301 the user and the search engine experience the same thing. Whereas with a canonical a user could still access the duplicate page - which in some cases might not be the best user experience. Also, Bing does not follow the directive of a canonical tag.

Here is a good background from Google:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

A redirect transfers a good portion, but does not guarantee that all of that value will follow you to the new domain. I would suggest finding some of the highest value links to your old domain, contact the site owner, and have them update your info to the address of the new domain.

Kyu,

In my working with several different CMS editors, on occasion there is a system solution to cut down on this kind of duplication. I would investigate that with whatever knowledge base or support is available. Perhaps there is a way to prevent the duplicates from existing.

I would not worry too much about penalties as long as the 301 or canonical tag (whichever you choose) is properly set up.

Have you registered your site with Bing Webmaster Tools? From there you can get an idea of how they are viewing your site, get notification of any issues, and work toward fixing things to get your site content in good standings with what they want.

How are you going about tracking your rankings? Right now via a manual review I see you at the bottom of page one for popcorn machines.

Keep in mind rankings do fluctuate by week, day, and sometimes even hour.

Definitely an interesting situation. You are trying to prevent a duplicate content issue across domains by using both noindex and a canonical tag.

Typically it is used for similar pages within the same domain.

Google does say, "

Can rel="canonical" be used to suggest a canonical URL on a completely different domain?

There are situations where it's not easily possible to set up redirects. This could be the case when you need to migrate to a new domain name using a web server that cannot create server-side redirects. In this case, you can use the rel="canonical" link element to specify the exact URL of the domain preferred for indexing. While the rel="canonical" link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible."

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

As such, with Google you would probably be ok just using the canonical. Bing however does not follow the tag so you could face issues with them. The link juice question is very good. I would hesitate to say that Google would fully take the directive of the canonical on a page it has been told to not index or follow. There is a chance they could hit that directive and then ignore the canonical.

In my opinion, you still run a small risk of having items filtered out due to being too similar. If you feel the balance of unique content compared to duplicate is much more on the unique side - you may be ok. You may have less risk of being "penalized" compared to just filtered. Meaning your domain as a whole may not face penalty, but some of those pages still might have difficulty showing up due to being too similar for a given search.

A decent way to explore this is to do searches for phrases that might be exclusive to those pages that have similar content. Do they all show up? Then you are probably ok. How about an exact phrase match using quotes around the search query. Do some testing and see if you are hitting a filter or not.