Nearly identical pages on site

According to MSN, the following should not be done or your ranking may be penalized:

Each time we have submitted to a search engine it has been with our base URL only. However, a lot of the content on our site dynamic but is setup to appear static. Out of necessity we have included the category identification number into each of the links on our site for the purpose of tracking page views on specific items. However, a single item can be in a variety of categories meaning that item will show up multiple times throughout the site under a slightly different URL containing the ID for that particular category it is listed under.

Will this be looked down upon by the search engines and will they penalize our site because the same item is linked to from different parts of the site but under different URLs?

Our links are of the style http://www.our-site.com/category-12345/itemid-53906/item-title.html

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I'm not sure I completely understand your question, and I'm not a guru on this subject, but I'll offer my opinion based on what I think you're asking. (gotta get the legal stuff out of the way )

The generally accepted rule is that content is king. If that linked-to item is relevant to the rest of the content on multiple pages, I don't believe you will be penalized. However, if the item is referenced only as a product ID # or similar - itemid-53906 - it wouldn't surprise me if your site took a hit because of that. The fix would be to include a product description along with the ID.

Hope that helps.

Almost all of the content found at each link is relevant unless an included upselling link gets fudged by a confused script.

If for any reason the site contains a page that seems to go against what is acceptable to the search engine, will the search engine penalize that page alone or the entire site even if those unacceptable pages are the minority?

Thanks for the input!

My understanding is that you would not be penalized unless it appears to the engine that you are purposely trying to "work the system." My rule of thumb is to simply be straightforward & honest about creating the site, without trying to get something for nothing. A legitimate site will do well, all other things being equal.

Good luck.

Our site is pretty straight forward from what I can tell and everything we have is legal and we are completely honest. My fear is misinterpretations by seemingly intelligent indexing algorithms.

Ahh well...time will tell. If we don't see the search engines displaying our site in the coming months, we will have to seek professional outside help to ensure something isn't setup that could confuse the SEs.

Thanks!