Considered Duplicate Content?

[seoapprentice]

On some of my pages a user can "drill-down" from a broad category to a very specific category. This is typically regional: region - country - state. The text content (2 - 4 paragraphs) as they drill down remains much the same, only the region name changes and the links and images to the products specific to that region changes.

Could this be seen as duplicate content and be penalized? I ask because many of our more detailed pages (i.e. state) show up in the listings as title only. From what I've read, this is a indicator for duplicate content.

[David Wallace]

It could with Yahoo. They seem to be the most diligent about penalizing duplicate content. It is best IMO to have unique content for each page and not rely on cookie cutter template style text that simply differs page to page by a few keyword placements.

[Jenstar]

Funny, I am having more problems with Google with duplicate content ;) BUt I agree with what Dave said, you want to avoid duplicate pages within a site, so take steps to make each page unique.

[seoapprentice]

Thanks for the responses!

Would this cause problems for the entire site, or just cause those pages to rank lower? There are hundreds of pages in this fashion. Each category (50+) on the site has regional drill-down pages which can have 20+ pages depending on the regions in which we have products/services for that category.

Is there a better way to do this - keeping in mind that the site is static?