Duplicate content is one of the most common issues on ecommerce sites, and product pages are where it tends to pile up fastest. If you’ve got variants, filters, or pages that have been copied without much thought, there’s a good chance you have more duplication than you realise.

What does a duplicate product page actually look like? Sometimes it’s obvious: the same product listed twice under different URLs. More often it’s subtle. Filtered pages on a category (sorting by price, colour, or size) can generate dozens of unique URLs with almost identical content. Faceted navigation is a classic culprit.

Why does it matter? When search engines find multiple pages with very similar content, they have to decide which one to index and rank. They might make the wrong call, splitting attention between pages rather than concentrating it on the one you actually want to rank. It can also waste crawl budget on pages that add no real value.

The main fixes. For product variants, the most common solution is canonical tags. A canonical tag tells search engines which version of a page is the “master” copy, so they consolidate their signals onto that one URL even if others exist.

For filtered or faceted pages, you have a few options. You can block certain parameters from being crawled in your robots.txt, use noindex tags on the generated pages, or configure your canonical tags so filtered pages point back to the main category page.

What about pagination? If your category pages run across multiple pages, make sure each one is properly set up and not treated as a duplicate of page one.

This kind of technical tidying can feel unglamorous, but it genuinely pays off. Cleaning up duplication helps search engines understand your site better and puts your strongest pages in the best possible position to rank.

Not sure how much duplication is hiding on your site? Get a free audit from Pollinate Marketing and we’ll find it for you.