Magento provides the option to use categories in your product URLs for the search engine optimization benefits it brings, but they’ve implemented it in a very unusual way. Basically, if you enable this option, you’ll end up with at least 4 URLs per product. Once people realize it, this often raises a number of concerns including possible duplicate content penalty from Google, fractured link juice for product pages, frustrated admins, etc.
With so many people also searching for a clever solution, I decided disabling the feature was an unacceptable solution, and took the challenge.
For anyone who doesn’t know,