Duplicate Content - Mobile Site
-
We think that a mobile version of our site is causing a duplicate content issue; what's the best way to stop the mobile version being indexed. Basically the site forwards mobile users to "/mobile" which is just a mobile optimised version of the original site.
Is it best to block the /mobile folder from being crawled?
-
If you want to block the /mobile folder from being crawled you would need to set up a robots.txt file and input this text:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /mobile
Personally, I would use the rel=canonical tag and tell search engines that the preferred version of the page would be the non-mobile version. You can learn more about rel=canonical here...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Selling same products under separate brands and can't consolidate sites...duplicate content issues?
I have a client selling home goods online and in-store under two different brand names in separate regions of the country. Currently, the websites are completely identical aside from branding. It is unlikely that they would have the capacity to write unique titles and page content for each website (~25,000 pages each), and the business would never consolidate the sites. Would it make sense to use canonical tags pointing to the higher-performing website on category and product pages? This way we could continue to capture branded search to the lesser brand while consolidating authority on the better performing website. What would you do?
Technical SEO | | jluke.fusion0 -
Duplicate content on job sites
Hi, I have a question regarding job boards. Many job advertisers will upload the same job description to multiple websites e.g. monster, gumtree, etc. This would therefore be viewed as duplicate content. What is the best way to handle this if we want to ensure our particular site ranks well? Thanks in advance for the help. H
Technical SEO | | HiteshP0 -
Mobile website content optimisation
Hi there, someone I know is going to put their site to a mobile version with a mobile sub domain (m.). I have recommended responsive but for now this is their only way forward to cope with the 21st April update by Google. My question is what is the best practice for content, as its a different url will there need to be a canonical tag in to stop duplication and thus being penalised from the Google panda update? Any advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | tdigital0 -
Subdomain Severe Duplicate Content Issue
Hi A subdomain for our admin site has been indexed and it has caused over 2000 instances of duplicate content. To fix this issue, is a 301 redirect or canoncial tag the best option? http://www.example.com/services http://admin.example.com/services Really appreciate your advice J
Technical SEO | | Metricly-Marketing0 -
Index.php duplicate content
Hi, new here. Im looking for some help with htaccess file. index.php is showing duplicate content errors with: mysite.com/index.php mysite.com/ mysite.com ive managed to use the following code to remove the www part of the url: IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Technical SEO | | klsdnflksdnvl
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] but how can i redirect the mysite.com/index.php and mysite.com/ to mysite.com. Please help0 -
An odd duplicate content issue...
Hi all, my developers have just assured me that nothing has changed form last week but in the today's crawl I see all the website duplicated: and the difference on the url is the '/' so basically the duplicated urls are: htts://blabla.bla/crop htts://blabla.bla/crop/ Any help in understanding why is much appreciated. thanks
Technical SEO | | LeadGenerator0 -
Duplicate Content and URL Capitalization
I have multiple URLs that SEOMoz is reporting as duplicate content. The reason is that there are characters in the URL that may, or may not, be capitalized depending on user input. A couple examples are: www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-rent www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-rent There are currently thousands of instances of this on the site. Is this something I should spend effort to try and resolve (may not be minor effort), or should I just ignore it and move on?
Technical SEO | | Jom0 -
Avoiding duplicate content/same pages
hi I have been checking through all the Q and A but i i'm still not sure how you get http://www.domain.co.uk/index.html to be just http://www.domain.co.uk/? Do you add canonical to the index page to point to the page you prefer and then add a 301 redirect? thanks
Technical SEO | | challen0