Duplicate content error?
-
I am seeing an error for duplicate content for the following pages:
http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/
http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/index.asp
Doesn't the first URL just automatically redirect to the default page in that directory (index.asp)? Why is it showing up as separate duplicate pages?
-
@Streamline is right - as soon as the engines encounter both versions, they see it as two pages. It's no problem for human visitors, but it can create issues with duplicate URLs in the Google index. You can either 301-redirect the "index.asp" version back to the cleaner, root URL or use a canonical. ASP/.Net can be weird about 301s, so the canonical is probably easier.
Generally, we suggest people canonical to the shorter/friendlier version, but the trouble here is that you're using the "/index.asp" version in your internal links. If you can change the internal links to the "/contact/" version, I'd prefer that, but if not, then set the canonical tag to the "/index.asp" version. The most important thing is consistency. If you link to one version but canonical to the other, Google could ignore your canonical tag. Put simply, your canonical URL isn't really canonical, in that case.
-
Thanks for the response! Is it best practice to specify the canonical URL as the "unspecific" link? Should I not rather specify the canonical URL as "http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/index.asp"?
-
They're two different URLs.
If the URL changes but the content stays the same then it's classed as duplicate content.
I feel your pain though - the amount of duplicate pages I've ended up with just because copywriters like to capitalize their words...
-
There's several possible ways the search engines could have come across both versions of that page. If I had to guess, it's because somewhere on the web or even on your own website there are links to both URLs. It's a pretty common issue but one that is easily resolved with the rel="canonical" tag.
Simply put the following code in the header of that page -
This tells the search engines to use your designated URL anytime they access that page.
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
-
Unsolved Strange "?offset" URL found with content crawl issues
I recently recieved a slew of content crawl issues via Moz for URL's that I have never seen before For example:
Moz Pro | | HannahPalamara
Standard URL: https://skilldirector.com/news,
Newly identified URL: https://skilldirector.com/news?offset=1469542207800&category=Competency+Management). Does anyone know where the URL comes from and how to fix it?0 -
Duplicate Site Content found in Moz; Have a URL Parameter set in Google Webmaster Tools
Hey, So on our site we have a Buyer's Guide that we made. Essentially it is a pop-up with a series of questions that then recommends a product. The parameter ?openguide=true can be used on any url on our site to pull this buyer's guide up. Somehow the Moz Site Crawl reported each one of our pages as duplicate content as it added this string (?openguide=true) to each page. We already have a URL Parameter set in Google Webmaster Tools as openguide ; however, I am now worried that google might be seeing this duplicate content as well. I have checked all of the pages with duplicate title tags in the Webmaster Tools to see if that could give me an answer as to whether it is detecting duplicate content. I did not find any duplicate title tag pages that were because of the openguide parameter. I am just wondering if anyone knows:
Moz Pro | | MitchellChapman
1. a way to check if google is seeing it as duplicate content
2. make sure that the parameter is set correctly in webmaster tools
3. or a better way to prevent the crawler from thinking this is duplicate content Any help is appreciated! Thanks, Mitchell Chapman
www.kontrolfreek.com0 -
Moz says I am missing titles and meta tags and have duplicate content
I just redesigned my website and suddenly traffic has dropped. Moz says I am missing titles, meta tag descriptions and have a lot of duplicate content. My site is http://skigenie.com and is full of unique and hand written content,. Are there any wordpress plugins that will add titles etc to my pages (some of the added ones are custom)? Any help would be much appreciated!
Moz Pro | | flexy0 -
Why is moz saying I have a 404 error?
I recently asked a question on here about how to fix my 404 error. I figured it out, and now webmaster tools says it's not there any more. This as been confirmed by keeping watch for about a week now. But Moz just crawled my site today and is for some reason showing an error. Am i missing something here or is Moz a little slow sometimes?
Moz Pro | | NateStewart0 -
Duplicate content
Hi Since adding blog to a site semoz is reporting increased duplicate content warning on seomoz crawl error tool such as: /blog/category/easter being a duplicate of blog/2013/03 Does this type of dupe content matter ? If so how do you stop this ? Also pages and pages of dupe content reported from internal/site search results, such as: /catalogsearch/result/index/?q=mens+fashion being a duplicate of /catalogsearch/result/?q=mens+fashion Does this matter need to be fixed or since internal site search not an issue and can just ignore, if it is an issue what do you need do to fix this type of dupe content ? Cheers Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
The crawl report shows a lot of 404 errors
They are inactive products, and I can't find any active links to these product pages. How can I tell where the crawler found the links?
Moz Pro | | shopwcs0 -
Duplicate page content on / and index.php
Hi I am new to SEOmoz and in the crawl diagnostics for one of my clients it came back duplicate content on the homepage www.myclient.co.uk and on the www.myclient.co.uk/index.php which is obviously the same page. I understand that the key is to do a 301 redirect from the index to /, however how will I know that this will not just create an ever ending loop on the server? From your experience how is the best way to tackle this crawl error? Also is there a specific question that I need to ask the server?
Moz Pro | | search_shop0 -
Error 403
I'm getting this message "We were unable to grade that page. We received a response code of 403. URL content not parseable" when using the On-Page Report Card. Does anyone know how to go about fixing this? I feel like I've tried everything.
Moz Pro | | Sean_McDonnell0