No it will not be. As long as the "detail" information is different, most SE's will allow it (within reason). Common Headers and Footers are used in most design concepts and as such, create a "Duplicate" by design. This alone would trigger the penalty and if this would be heavly inforced, all database driven shopping carts, database apps, eBay, etc. would violate it.

But as you get deeper into Dynamic ASP or PHP type pages, the "Summary" and "Detail" item pages of a shopping cart or database driven apps is where they start looking. Or the "copy & paste" pages.

I think Google and the other SE just don't index them (at the page level). It is just like Google rarely indexes below the 4th level(tier) of a site. And the 4th level is where the "detail item page" usually is.

I always thought I was being penalized too, but as I starting using the Sitemap, those "penalized pages" were indexed.

My rule of thumb is:

If it is a "Form" design, then it is ok
If it is a "copy & paste", then it is not.

And for those that want to know about the gray area, I have seen discussion that range between 40% to 50% of the content the same would triggers the penalty. But no real proof or benchmark verifying this.

Good luck

Jim Catanich

Thanks, Jim.