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My dynamic product pages are marked as duplicate content by Google (Internal duplicate). They are structurally similar, but present different information about each product (price, description, image...). They have little in common except the layout. Their meta tags are also different. Each page is on a separate URL (/product/[productID]). Pages have a fair amount of content and the content is meaningful (people actively visit the pages and some even have some strong backlinks). I have never had this issue before and my other product category on the same site is indexing fine.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem? What could be causing this? Any help is welcome.

(I use next.js and everything is rendered server-side)

Also, my site is relatively new and doesn't get much traffic. Is there any chance that this will be fixed when the site gets bigger?

UPDATE

I added self-referencing canonical tags to the pages. However, this did not solve the issue. Google still sees pages as duplicates and indexes only one page.

Also, on live tests, URLs are rendered correctly by Google

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    Have they got unique and appropriate canonical tags ?
    – Rohit Gupta
    Jun 21 at 4:30
  • @rohitgupta thanks for your input. No, they don't have any canonical tags. Do you think adding self-referencing canonical would help? I will try adding them and let you know if it solves the issue.
    – Duplicate content
    Jun 21 at 7:20
  • I'd run a live check on the pages and look at the snapshot to make sure Google is seeing your content.
    – Tony McCreath
    Jun 21 at 20:55
  • @RohitGupta I added self-referencing canonical tags to the pages, however, this did not solve the problem. Google still sees pages as duplicates and indexes only one page.
    – Duplicate content
    Jun 22 at 14:58
  • @TonyMcCreath thanks for your concern, However, I already did run live checks and pages are rendering fine without errors.
    – Duplicate content
    Jun 22 at 14:58

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As pointed out by @rohit I would add the canonical tags to address the notice from Google. In addition, short descriptions provided by manufacturers are not high-quality content. Manufacture's descriptions are duplicated across thousands of sites.

I've asked a few questions in the comments, which may help in determining a way to get these pages indexed. If they are unique products and you are not competing with Amazon, using the Google structured data for products (I'd suggest the json) may help get these pages indexed.

If the products are not unique, you can search for the products to see what level of beyond the manufacturer's description will be needed for Google to consider the descriptions high quality. However, there may be more space for local businesses, brick and mortar, using structured data and they may be able to get away with using an AI assisted description. I would take the opportunity in the descriptions to add brand marketing, that is why the customer should buy from you specifically.

Note: URL (/product/[productID]) may mean the canonical tags are example.com/product/[productID]/ the default action of apache is the URL without the trailing / is 301ed to the URL with the trailing / and will result in a notice not indexed "Page with redirect" But this depends on how your site is configured, (worth double against what is in the browser address bar).

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