SEO: Amazon Additional Categories

[wickermanxxx]

Is there any chance you could add the facility to add extra categories to the Amazon products. At the moment the script pulls in the same product into whichever category I do the pull from but rather than add an additional category to the original info page it creates another details/info page for the product.

This will surely be related to the dreaded "duplicate content" issue that Google snags?

[Omar]

I am not really sure what you mean. If you grab products from amazon for same keywords but in different categories, script will surely grab same products, since is nothing else to pull. You should have different rules/keywords in different categories if you want different products. Dupliatces are filtered only if they are same in a specified category.

[wickermanxxx]

Thanks Omar,

For example http://store.landscapinginfo4u.com/

In Path Lights
http://store.landscapinginfo4u.com/products/path-lights/malibu-outdoor-6.htm

In Solar Powered
http://store.landscapinginfo4u.com/products/solar-powered/malibu-outdoor-30.htm

As you say the plugin has pulled the exact same product for each of my two categories as it does fit into those categories. However WHY do I need to have two product pages? Too much of this and my site will get caught by Googles duplicate content filter!

Surely if the plugin pulls the EXACT same product that already appears in another category it should list the item in that category BUT only point to the SAME details page - rather than producing another?

This is a very serious issue! I know as I have had sites excluded from Google before now and I do my very best to avoid it. At the moment StorStacker is forcing me to have a product ONLY in one category so I need to manually remove all duplicates

Surely if the script references the EXACT same ASIN (in this case B000E8VAK2) then it should recognise this and point to the correstponding details page?

I understand the reasons for the current set up with the category in the url BUT surely it is not too difficult to set up a 2nd, 3rd or even 4th category option with the text on the details page saying - "Also appears in: 2nd, 3rd 4th"

To me this makes far more sense than the current set up which is actually rather dangerous for sites which have large numbers of products and categories where there is any crossover, which is very common.

I hate to look at the negatives in such a fine product but it can only get better by constructive criticism. Maybe you had not considered this at all, or maybe not considered it important, but in todays climate any edge is incredibly important and ALL risks HAVE to be avoided at all costs!

[Omar]

Well.. Your products surely appreas twice because it fits to both subcategories as they are.

I think the most legit opinion on duplicate issues should be google's itself: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359

As they say, duplicate code is only penalised when considered malicious and only used to manipulate SE. In this case is nothing malicious. And they specifically mention that "Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs" are not considered as bad practice. If you are still concerned though, you can re-think your category structure, because Solar powered is not really a category but can be a subcategory (already included) in other categories like Path lights, Deck lights.. actually any kind of lights or accessories. Can't make the script use references in description and instead of product description send you to a product in another category. Or better say, we can make it, but the amount of resources that will need to check each new ASIN against all already grabbed ASINs will require a dedicated server to have enough resources.