Do 'Printable Pages' = duplicate content?

[hommealone]

I've designed "printable versions" of several pages on my site (price lists, product information, etc). They're basically just stripped down versions in black & white, with minimal graphics and no navigation elements. All of the text is the same.

But now I've begun to worry: might search engines see these as "duplicate content" pages, and penalize my site for that?

If so, what options do I have for pages like this that will allow me to avoid penalization?

[sajdlz]

I can't say whether or not search engines would see it that way since that is not my strongest area but I do know that there are scripts out there that can accomplish the task without duplicating the content, they strip out the html tags and do it on the fly:)

[imvain2]

For the googlebot there is a metatag to stop Mrs. GoogleBot from visiting your pages.

<META NAME="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

[paulhiles]

You could add imvain2's suggestion to the meta tags of your 'duplicate' print-friendly pages.. and you might also consider adding these pages to your exclusions in your robots.txt file. Easily done if your print-friendly pages are all stored in one directory... not so good if they're in the same directory as the content you wish to have indexed.

My own favourite solution for print-friendly pages is to use CSS (separate style instructions for printing), thereby avoiding the need for an extra page to be created.

[Flying Addicted eMarketer]

Originally Posted by paulhiles

My own favourite solution for print-friendly pages is to use CSS (separate style instructions for printing), thereby avoiding the need for an extra page to be created.

True, True... the best way to do it;-)

IMHO

FAE

[EJRS.COM]

I have duplicated content without being penalized. The page structures are totally different design wise, but exactly same text. And it is a good idea to follow imvain2's advice of adding the tag <META NAME="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">.

[matauri]

Definately CSS. Have whatever background or colour scheme you require, and not having to reproduce a 2nd printable version...what could be easier?

Tho if you decide to use total CSS for 'all' formating & layout, its a good idea to check the page with no CSS to see that you have it in printable order, especially relevent with image placement on the html page (if you are being creative). I've made this mistake before. So I came up with a good double checking... If you check your site for accessibility compliance for readers, etc, you can also check to make sure that it prints well.

[splinter]

I have to agree with the others, CSS is my fave way of doing it.

[cooper]

Originally Posted by paulhiles

My own favourite solution for print-friendly pages is to use CSS (separate style instructions for printing), thereby avoiding the need for an extra page to be created.

And you would do this by using this method:

<style media="print" type="text/css">
<!--
@import url(filepath.css);
-->
</style>

assuming that you are being XHTML compliant of course. Otherwise you could just put in the STYLE tags and your styles in between:

<style media="print" type="text/css">
.class1 {style stuff;}
</style>

or with the old link tag:

<link href="printstyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print">

Good luck!

[DT]

Yes, css. I am planning to implement the same feature in my organaisation's web.

[greeneagle]

We have not been penalized for "Printer Friendly Pages" at www.vortexventures.com . Google sppears to have tolerance for duplicate content in different media.
It has been our experience that "pdf" pages come in one PR lower than corresponding HTML pages with duplicate content, which seems appropriate enough.

What I would really like to know though, is how http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/
and other sites get away with multiple exact HTML pages in different designs while maintaining PR7-8s all the way thru? --- and what about 300 or so links on a single page when GOOGLE recommends no more than 100?

Are there special exceptions after joining the top 100,000 websites? Do the alogrithms change as popularity grows?

Are there different sets of rules at different popularity (traffic) levels?

We believe there are.
Ken

[dani_zee]

Do you think that these will be seen as dup content. I went from page rank 3 to 2 this month.

Here is my web site
www.fashionablydrunk.com
Here is my cafe web site
www.cafeshops.com/fashionablydrun