Duplicate Product Content Question

[globallink]

I am adding products to a client's shopping cart with products that manufacturers have given him permission to use from their website. He wants me to cut and paste the manufacturer's product descriptions for his own cart.

My question is will Google ding him for duplicate content, even though it is legitimate?

Thanks for your input.

[pleeker]

Quite possibly, yes. None of us can predict with certainty what will happen, but this exact scenario is what has caused a lot of product pages to end up in the supplemental index -- product descriptions copied word-for-word from another site (like the manufacturer's).

[globallink]

Thanks for the reply.

What is the supplimental index?

[g1smd]

They might do.

Why would google want to list 2000 identical websites with 20 000 identical products on 20 000 identical content pages?

Build a unique site, not a copy. Why would people visit you and not the manufacturer instead? The manufacturer is the authorative resource.

[pleeker]

The supplemental index is kinda like detention for bad web pages. :)

Here's how Google describes it (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34473&query=supplemental&topic=&type=).

Pages with duplicate content often end up there, as do low-quality pages. You can do a Google search for "get out of supplemental index" for more help on it -- there are lots of articles written about this topic (including one on my site).