database driven duplicate content penalty?

[kool aussie]

Is it possible to get a duplicate content penalty in google via database driven search results using rewrite rules?

For example, lets say you had a site about books and used a rewrite rule in htaccess so pages look static for search engines, you also have 2 ways of finding books... authors and categories.

If you had an author who wrote several books on a particular category and that was the only author you had for that category then

"domain.com/author/book_list.html"
and
"domain.com/category/book_list.html"
would both contain the same snippets for the same books.

Could this scenario potentially result in a "near duplicate or duplicate" content penalty in google?
(this scenario could relate to any database driven site ie travel, real estate, cars etc)

[UltraZulu]

Hi

I would think that it would be considered duplicate content if you have a multiple pages on a site that has the exact same content.

If it were up to me I would rather concentrate on getting my navigation sorted. Doing this would also be less confusing to your visitors.

[kool aussie]

Not sure what you find confusing about being able to search/view a database via different criteria (ie author or book category). That's the whole idea of having a database driven/navigation site. :confused:

[Marketing Guy]

I wouldn't worry about listing pages that users can re-order in terms of duplicate content. The main issue with duplicate content is if the information pages are duplicated.

MG

[St0n3y]

I wouldn't worry, blogs do the same thing and you don't see any problems there.