Magento and Duplicate Content Penalties

As a Magento developer, I am often researching the various aspects of SEO for our Magento projects, today I came across an interesting article published by Jill Cocher about duplicate content myths.  Jill argues that Google does not penalise duplicate content within a site, but having duplicate content issues can dilute a site's link popularity.

Armando Roggio discusses how to avoid link dilution in Magento by setting the "Use Categories Path for Product URLs" option in the setting found at System > Configuration > Categories > Search Engine Optimizations.

Like Fuse, Armando is very impressed with Magento's ability to provide users with all their SEO needs straight out of the tin.

"Magento is very solid where search engine optimization is concerned. As an example, note how easy it is to restructure the product URL to the SEO flavor one likes best. Producing 301 redirects is exactly that easy, as are many other SEO options.

"What's more, I have seen site traffic increase when a merchant moved to Magento from another platform, recognizing that the search-engine re-indexing process takes time."

Magento are predicting sales growth of 300% for 2010.  With an estimated 60,000 websites using it,  Magento is the fastest growing eCommerce platform.  They estimate that $25 Billion in transactions are processed through Magento powered websites each year.