Why is Google Reporting big increase in duplicate content after Canonicalization update?
-
Our web hosting company recently applied a update to our site that should have rectified Canonicalized URLs. Webmaster tools had been reporting duplicate content on pages that had a query string on the end.
After the update there has been a massive jump in Webmaster tools reporting now over 800 pages of duplicate content, Up from about 100 prior to the update plus it reporting some very odd pages (see attached image)
They claim they have implement Canonicalization in line with Google Panda & Penguin, but surely something is not right here and it's going to cause us a big problem with traffic.
Can anyone shed any light on the situation???
-
Hi All,
I finally got to the bottom of the problem and it is that they have not applied canonicalization across the site, only to certain pages which is not my understanding when they implemented the update a few weeks back.
So they are preparing a hot fix as part of a service pack to our site which will rectify this issue and apply canonicalization to all pages that contain query strings. This should clear that problem up once and for all.
Thank you both for your input, a great help.
-
Hi Deb... I have nice blogpost from seomoz blog for you written by Lindsey in which she has explained it very nicely about it.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions
In this post check the example of digg.com. Digg.com has blocked "submit" in robots.txt but still Google has indexed URLs. Check screenshot in the Blog post. Hope this help.
-
_Those URLs will be crawled by Google, but will not be Indexed. And that being said, there will be no more duplicate content issue. I hope I have made myself clear over here. _
-
Deb, even if you block those URLs in Robots.txt, Google will going to index those URLs because those URLs are interlink with website. The best way is to put canonical tag so that you will get inter linking benefits as well.
-
Fraser,
Till now they have not implemented Canonicalization in your website. After Canonicalization implementation also you will duplication errors in your webmaster account but it will not harm your ranking. Because Canonicalization helps Google in selecting the page from multiple version of similar page that has to displayed in SERP. In above example, First URL is the original URL but the second URL has some parameters in URLs so your preferred version of URL should be first one. After proper Canonicalization implementation you will only see URLs that you have submitted in your sitemap via Google Webmaster Tool.
And about two webmaster codes, I don't think we have setup two separate accounts, you can provide view or admin access from your webmaster account to them.
-
Either you will have to block these pages via Google Webmaster Tools by Using URL parameter or else you need to block them via robots.txt file like this –
To block this URL: http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels/baby-towels/prodlist_ct493.htm?dir=1&size=100
You need to use this tag in robots.txt file – Disallow: /.htm?dir=
-
Hi,
Here are a couple of examples for you.
Duplication issue is showing because of below type of URLs:http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels/baby-towels/prodlist_ct493.htm
http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels/baby-towels/prodlist_ct493.htm?dir=1&size=100 ``` -
The Canonical URL updates were supposed to have been implement some weeks back.
I have asked why there are 2 webmaster tools codes, I expect this is my account plus they have one to monitor things there end.
Query string parameters have been setup, but I am unsure if they are configured correctly as this is all a bit new to me and i am in there hands to deal with this really.
The URLs without query strings are submitted to Webmaster tools via site maps and they are the URLs we want indexed.
-
Can you please share the URL and some example pages where the problem of duplicate content is appearing?
-
Hi Fraser,
Are you talking about towelsrus.co.uk ? I didn't find any canonical tag in any source page of your website. Are they sure about implementation ? or they will implement it in future. And one more interesting point, why there are two webmaster code in your website's source page. Below are those to webmaster codes:
<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">google-site-verification</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">BJ6cDrRRB2iS4fMx2zkZTouKTPTpECs2tw-3OAvIgh4</a>" /><meta name="<a class="attribute-value">google-site-verification</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">SjaHRLJh00aeQY9xJ81lorL_07UXcCDFgDFgG8lBqCk</a>" />Have you blocked querystring parameters in "URL parameters" in Google webmasterTools ?
Duplication issue is showing because of below type of URLs:http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels/baby-towels/prodlist_ct493.htm
http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels/baby-towels/prodlist_ct493.htm?dir=1&size=100No canonical tag found on above URLs as well.
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
-
Same site serving multiple countries and duplicated content
Hello! Though I browse MoZ resources every day, I've decided to directly ask you a question despite the numerous questions (and answers!) about this topic as there are few specific variants each time: I've a site serving content (and products) to different countries built using subfolders (1 subfolder per country). Basically, it looks like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GhillC
site.com/us/
site.com/gb/
site.com/fr/
site.com/it/
etc. The first problem was fairly easy to solve:
Avoid duplicated content issues across the board considering that both the ecommerce part of the site and the blog bit are being replicated for each subfolders in their own language. Correct me if I'm wrong but using our copywriters to translate the content and adding the right hreflang tags should do. But then comes the second problem: how to deal with duplicated content when it's written in the same language? E.g. /us/, /gb/, /au/ and so on.
Given the following requirements/constraints, I can't see any positive resolution to this issue:
1. Need for such structure to be maintained (it's not possible to consolidate same language within one single subfolders for example),
2. Articles from one subfolder to another can't be canonicalized as it would mess up with our internal tracking tools,
3. The amount of content being published prevents us to get bespoke content for each region of the world with the same spoken language. Given those constraints, I can't see a way to solve that out and it seems that I'm cursed to live with those duplicated content red flags right up my nose.
Am I right or can you think about anything to sort that out? Many thanks,
Ghill0 -
Could duplicate (copied) content actually hurt a domain?
Hi 🙂 I run a small wordpress multisite network where the main site which is an informative portal about the Langhe region in Italy, and the subsites are websites of small local companies in the tourism and wine/food niche. As an additional service for those who build a website with us, I was thinking about giving them the possibility to use some ouf our portal's content (such as sights, events etc) on their website, in an automatic way. Not as an "SEO" plus, but more as a service for their current users/visitors base: so if you have a B&B you can have on your site an "events" section with curated content, or a section about thing to see (monuments, parks, museums, etc) in that area, so that your visitors can enjoy reading some content about the territory. I was wondering if, apart from NOT being benefical, it would be BAD from an SEO point of view... ie: if they could be actually penlized by google. Thanks 🙂 Best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Enrico_Cassinelli0 -
Duplicate content across different domains in different countries?
Hi Guys, We have a 4 sites One in NZ, UK, Canada and Australia. All geo-targeting their respective countries in Google Search Console. The sites are identical. We recently added the same content to all 4 sites. Will this cause duplicate content issues or any issues even though they are in different countries and geo-targeting is set? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickstar0 -
Duplicating content from manufacturer for client site and using canonical reference.
We manage content for many clients in the same industry, and many of them wish to keep their customers on their individualized websites (understandably). In order to do this, we have duplicated content in part from the manufacturers' pages for several "models" on the client's sites. We have put in a Canonical reference at the start of the content directing back to the manufacturer's page where we duplicated some of the content. We have only done a handful of pages while we figure out the canonical reference potential issue. So, my questions are: Is this necessary? Does this hurt, help or not do anything SEO-wise for our ranking of the site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz1admin1 -
Google Not Indexing App Content
Hello Mozzers I recently noticed that there has been an increase in crawl errors reported in Google Search console & Google has stopped indexing our app content. Could this be due to the fact that there is a mismatch between the host path name mentioned within the android deeplink (within the alternate tag) and the actual URL of the page. For instance on the following desktop page http://www.example.com.au/page-1 the android deeplink points to http://www.example.com.au/android-app://com.example/http/www.example.com.au/4652374 Please note that the content on both pages (desktop & android) is same.Is this is a correct setup or am I doing something wrong here? Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InMarketingWeTrust0 -
Semi-duplicate content yet authoritative site
So I have 5 real estate sites. One of those sites is of course the original, and it has more/better content on most of the pages than the other sites. I used to be top ranked for all of the subdivsion names in my town. Then when I did the next 2-4 sites, I had some sites doing better than others for certain keywords, and then I have 3 of those sites that are basically the same URL structures (besides the actual domain) and they aren't getting fed very many visits. I have a couple of agents that work with me that I loaned my sites to to see if that would help since it would be a different name. My same youtube video is on each of the respective subdivision pages of my site and theirs. Also, their content is just rewritten content from mine about the same length of content. I have looked over and seen a few of my competitors who only have one site and their URL structures arent good at all, and their content isn't good at all and a good bit of their pages rank higher than my main site which is very frustrating to say the least since they are actually copy cats to my site. I sort of started the precedent of content, mapping the neighborhood, how far that subdivision is from certain landmarks, and then shot a video of each. They have pretty much done the same thing and are now ahead of me. What sort of advice could you give me? Right now, I have two sites that are almost duplicate in terms of a template and same subdivsions although I did change the content the best I could, and that site is still getting pretty good visits. I originally did it to try and dominate the first page of the SERPS and then Penguin and Panda came out and seemed to figure that game out. So now, I would still like to keep all the sites, but I'm assuming that would entail making them all unique, which seems to be tough seeing as though my town has the same subdivisions. Curious as to what the suggestions would be, as I have put a lot of time into these sites. If I post my site will it show up in the SERPS? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Veebs0 -
Manage category pages and duplicate content issues
Hi everybody, I am now auditing this website www.disfracessimon.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
this website has some issues with canonicals and other things. But right now I have found something that I would like to know your opinion. When I was checking parts of the content in google to find duplicate content issues I found this: I google I searched: "Chaleco de streck decorado con botones" and found First result: "Hombre trovador" is the one I was checking -> Correct
The following results are category pages where the product is listed in. I was wondering if this could cause any problem related with duplicated content. Should I no index category pages or should I keep it?
The first result in google was the product page. And category pages I think are good for link juice transfer and to capture some searchs from Google. Any advice? Thank you0 -
Duplicate content on ecommerce sites
I just want to confirm something about duplicate content. On an eCommerce site, if the meta-titles, meta-descriptions and product descriptions are all unique, yet a big chunk at the bottom (featuring "why buy with us" etc) is copied across all product pages, would each page be penalised, or not indexed, for duplicate content? Does the whole page need to be a duplicate to be worried about this, or would this large chunk of text, bigger than the product description, have an effect on the page. If this would be a problem, what are some ways around it? Because the content is quite powerful, and is relavent to all products... Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creode0