Member Avatar for Sabres

"Here is the latest internal thought I had that makes me wonder what its all about.

For curved shower rod there are about 50 to 75 sellers, including myself, all selling the same product from the same manufacturer.(who holds a patent) Add to this the redundant items from these same sellers being cross-listed on Ebay, Froogle, Shopzilla, , etc and you have several hundred pages that are all 100% relevent ro the consumer putting curved shower rod in the Google search box.

A high percentage of my competitors have sophisticated e-commerce sites that have already done their proper SEO (keyword saturation, title, links, usability, etc). So how does Google decide which 10 pages to put first? It hardly matters from Google's persepctive because they really have a few hundred pages that would be 100% relevent and 100% authoritative on curved shower rod.

The searcher will get what they want no matter which of these few hundred pages are served first. So have we reached a point in this case where the algorithym has gone beyond its purpose and all that is left for the webmasters is to game the algorithym as more information becomes appearent? I mean, the usual advice about making the page as good as it can be for the consumer has already been implemented and it just isn't going to get much better.

Thanks,

  • 2 Contributors
  • 1 Reply
  • 130 Views
  • 9 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by stymiee

Dani AI

Generated

As observes, when many sites sell the same item with nearly identical pages the search engine often treats those pages as a cluster and picks a representative rather than returning every near-duplicate. That choice is not random. It comes from a mix of technical signals, behavioral signals, and site-level trust that go beyond surface similarity. is right that external credibility matters, but search engines also use structured markup, canonical signals, and user-engagement patterns to decide which page best serves the query.

Practical actions that change which URL gets shown:

  • Create real differentiation on the product page: original photos, extended specifications, how-to content, warranty/returns details, or exclusive bundle offers.
  • Add page-level, fresh content such as verified customer reviews and Q&A so the page evolves and shows unique value.
  • Use product structured data so price, availability, brand, and review stars are machine-readable.
  • Ensure a single canonical URL per SKU: use redirects or rel=canonical and manage URL parameters to avoid competing duplicates.
  • If competing mainly on price/shipping, optimize your merchant feed and product metadata so shopping features surface your offer.

Troubleshooting and measurement: use Search Console to inspect which URL Google indexed as canonical and why, and check crawl logs for which pages receive crawl budget. If pages are being collapsed, look for large blocks of identical text or copied manufacturer descriptions and replace them with unique content. Avoid manipulative shortcuts; low-quality duplication attracts filters and penalization.

Further reading: Moz on duplicate content and the Schema.org Product type for structured product markup.

Member Avatar for stymiee

There are so many different factors involved in rankings pages that it is easy for them to rank sites about the same products. Even if the on page factors were identical in every way the off page factors would make the difference.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.