Problem with duplicated products

Hello BHW!
On the product subpages of the e-commerce I manage, there is a "Model-compatible" section. By clicking on individual models, the user is directed to a new product page, directed to a specific product. The newly opened product page is a copy of the general page - the "parent" - everything is duplicated except the names of the devices to which the product fits.

The copies differ by an additional number after the ID in the URL address and are indexed by Google. One base product may have even several thousand copies for different models, which results in a domain with several hundred thousand individual subpages. This causes huge problems with page duplication and indexation. The easiest solution would be to mark the copies with the rel=”canonical” tag. Additionally, the buttons in the “Model Matching” section should be marked as nofollow so that robots do not click on them. Another solution would be to remove copy sections and pages and redirect the addresses to the correct products.

However, we cannot do this, because performing the above actions will result in deindexing of pages with visibility, which may contribute to a decrease in visibility in Google.

My research in Ahrefs shows that copy pages bring about 4,000 views (with over 70,000 views for the entire domain).

What is the best thing to do in such a situation? Should we take radical actions - delete pages and redirect them to the correct ones, or gradually introduce corrections, but this process may take time (which we don’t have).

You can spend some with AI content and get more unique content for each of the pages,
This can be done via a WP plugin or a python script,

Think of a content that could be added to the specific pages,
Some example would be "what is version x.xx different from the others", "what features available in version x.xx", etc...
Even with this, you'll still have duplicate problem, for most of them, it could work yet still falls under some kind of spam which could get you doomed,

Adding rel canonical from these pages to the main product page would be safer approach to avoid getting flagged tho,
The thing is, this can cause loss in traffic as many of these pages would rank better for searches with specific versions of the model(s),

An hybrid and better approach would be to apply both of these only for less commonly searched pages,
You'll have to double check with which specific models versions are getting enough search volumes and leave this with their own canonical tags,
Invest time in both some keyword research tools like semrush or ahrefs as well as your GSC & make a list of the ones that you should keep,
From there, make more unique content for each of these pages (AI is your friend) & add canonical pointing to the main model page for the rest of pages,

Personally, i've seen a ton of such websites ranking well even with 90% duplicate content, you can search for programmatic SEO for reference,
But, it's all a matter of domain authority, websites with less trust & authority could be penalized sadly, take the risk in your own

Implement the canonical tags to indicate the preferred pages to Google. This can help reduce duplication issues without losing current visibility. Then, slowly phase out the less important duplicate pages and set up 301 redirects to the main product pages. This way, you'll consolidate the page value and reduce the risk of a significant drop in rankings.

In this situation, the best approach would be to use the rel="canonical" tag on the duplicate pages, pointing to the main/original product page. Additionally, mark the buttons in the "Model Matching" section with the nofollow attribute to prevent search engines from following those links. This helps consolidate the duplicate content and signals to search engines which version of the page is the preferred one, without causing a loss in visibility for your indexed pages.

maxmayer said:

Implement the canonical tags to indicate the preferred pages to Google. This can help reduce duplication issues without losing current visibility. Then, slowly phase out the less important duplicate pages and set up 301 redirects to the main product pages. This way, you'll consolidate the page value and reduce the risk of a significant drop in rankings.

Click to expand...

synciaguard said:

In this situation, the best approach would be to use the rel="canonical" tag on the duplicate pages, pointing to the main/original product page. Additionally, mark the buttons in the "Model Matching" section with the nofollow attribute to prevent search engines from following those links. This helps consolidate the duplicate content and signals to search engines which version of the page is the preferred one, without causing a loss in visibility for your indexed pages.

Click to expand...

I was thinking about this exact solution, but I was afraid that the entire domain would rapidly lose visibility, but now that I think about it, canonical tags should actually "smooth" this process. Thank you very much!

If anyone has any additional advice, I'd love to hear it