Duplicate document titles with unique content

I run a website directory where advertisers have a "printer friendly business card". These are pure html pages optimised for the advertisers service. Since many customers in many categories offer the same service, I give the same document title to each advertiser. This is to give an equal chance for each customer advert to come high.

Are multiple duplicate document titles but with unique content likely to be penalised with a lower position?

You wont see any kind of duplicate penalty if the actual content is different. Depending on the size of the content this would probably put you at a mer 2-5%.

Most new site builders (using dreamweaver, et al) end up with the same title on every page - Something like Mysite.com
and they dont get penalized.

Many thanks for advice, just what I was hoping to hear.

If you're worried about there being some penalty for using the sme titles, the easy way to get aroudn it in your case would be to use a title like...

Comapny Name - Service Type

That way you'll be able ot have ot same service for all, but the titles will be differnt because of the other name in it. Iv'e used this before, and it seems to work well. I've had no problems with this.

IMO having the same title on all of your pages is like going to a gun fight and leaving your gun at home. The title is one of your best optimization tools.

Egol, I totally agree with you about the optimisation value of document titles. Different titles on each page, reflecting actual used phrases, work extremely well for me in important search engines.

What I am currently trying to do is to have individual advertisers in my business directory come up on first page results. The majority of my main business categories already come up on search engines page one for two word phrases relating to my location and service.

Each advertiser has a “printer friendly” business card which is a short html document (in one sub-folder) consisting of customer advertising copy and contact details. So for example in the hotels category my research tells me that most visitors will type hotels wimbledon (or the other way round) into the search box. In addition to my main hotels page which lists all advertisers and currently comes no. 1 of 283,000 entries in google.com I want individual advertisers to be well placed also. This would enable me to make true marketing statements. As there are 283,000 other entries I presume I would need to restrict myself to the main keywords, which I know already work well. Pursuing this route I could end up with unique content pages but with multiple documents titles of hotels wimbledon. That course of action makes me cautious, as I don’t wish Google or any others to flag me for attempting to get multiple pages on page 1. My view by doing this is that I am assisting potential visitors to my area by supplying them with exactly what they are looking for and a by product of good SE placement success would enhance the reputation of my website.

The category I am currently working on is located at http://www.wimbledonvisitor.com/hotels and I have included the URL in case forum members are able to visit and see exactly what I am trying to achieve.

Best regards,
Andrzej

I have a local info site like yours with a small number of biz card pages. I hold topSERPs in the townname lodging, townname hotels, etc... and also the root townname.

You are getting them good exposure with your master page, but I don't think that the biz card pages should be titled the same way. Instead, I title mine with

name of the biz - townname state

That gives them SERP presence on the generic lodging KWs and the name of their biz. The small biz that does not have a website gets a nice benefit from this and the biz that has a website gets two backlinks - one from my category page and one from their biz card page.

Many thanks to all of you for excellent advice. I have learnt a huge amount from this forum and as learning is continuous, will keep visiting often.