Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    7
    3824
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • deskstudio
      deskstudio last edited by

      I've  attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section.

      Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com.

      Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages.

      I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now  I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up.

      This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me.

      I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Cyrus-Shepard
        Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

        Hi Todd,

        Oh no, looks like all your canonicals are pointing towards the homepage....

        <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="[http://www.cherrycreekspine.com<](view-source:http://www.cherrycreekspine.com%3C/)"/>
        

        Also looks like there's an extra carrot "<" at the end of the URL. Looks like it's coming from the wonky code.

        Regardless, this isn't what you want. This basically tells search engines that every page is a canonical of the homepage - and that all these other pages aren't important on their own. It's likely search engines will start to drop these pages out of their index unless this tag is removed immediately. Reminds me of Dr. Pete's canonical nightmares.

        In short... remove that canonical ASAP. It's probably better to have some duplicate content than a sitewide canonical that points to your homepage.

        Have you tried the Joomla Canonicalisation Plugin? Haven't tried it myself, but it might be smidgen easier than trying to code the php yourself. You can find it here: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/seo-a-metadata/url-canonicalization-/5355

        My guess is you can completely remove whatever manual canonical code you wrote, and the plugin will take care of the rest.

        Remember, when the code is working properly, each page with point to itself (without extra parameters and so on) the way a proper canonical should.

        Best of luck!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • IPROdigital
          IPROdigital @deskstudio last edited by

          View page source shows HTML. If I can't see the PHP file i.e. which generates the HTML it's impossible for me to know how. I'm not very clear on this. You can PM the file to me if you want - but don't send me any passwords please. 🙂

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • deskstudio
            deskstudio @IPROdigital last edited by

            Yikes... so, I checked the template html file and all including PHP info is there...

            View page source did not show all the code.

            So, still stuck.

            IPROdigital 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • deskstudio
              deskstudio @IPROdigital last edited by

              Hold on .... not all the copy was properly entered by me... I'll fix and retest.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • deskstudio
                deskstudio @IPROdigital last edited by

                Mr., I replaced the line in the html but no change. I'm completely new to this, so please forgive me. All of these concepts are new to me.

                Any other thoughts or direction? I looked at one of the Whiteboard videos... buy over my head.

                Thanks in advance... Todd

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • IPROdigital
                  IPROdigital last edited by

                  You need to code it again:

                  In the HTML I can see on Line 15:

                  rel="canonical" href="http://www.cherrycreekspine.com<?php echo parse_url($canonical, PHP_URL_PATH); ?>"/>

                  You need to write everything after href="

                  and before "/>

                  in php; probably:

                  <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo="" '<a="" class=" " href="http://www.cherrycreekspine.com%26lt%3B/?php%20echo%20parse_url($canonical,%20PHP_URL_PATH);%20?%3E" target="_blank">http://www.cherrycreekspine.com<'.parse_url($canonical, PHP_URL_PATH); ?>"/></link rel="canonical" href="<?php>

                  If it doesnt sort it, post again and I'll try to help you further.

                  Also, you either apply canonical values or remove duplicate content (the post title is slightly confused, I think) 🙂

                  deskstudio 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote -1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • ajiabs

                    Duplicate content due to parked domains

                    I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names.  So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs
                    0
                  • allianzireland

                    Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical

                    I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland
                    0
                  • EasyLounge

                    [E-commerce] Duplicate content due to color variations (canonical/indexing)

                    Hello, We currently have a lot of color variations on multiple products with almost the same content. Even with our canonicals being set, Moz's crawling tool seems to flag them as duplicate content. What we have done so far: Choosing the best-selling color variation (our "master product") Adding a rel="canonical" to every variation (with our "master product" as the canonical URL) In my opinion, it should be enough to address this issue. However, being given the fact that it's flagged as duplicate by Moz, I was wondering if there is something else we should do? Should we add a "noindex,follow" to our child products and "index,follow" to our master product? (sounds to me like such a heavy change) Thank you in advance

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EasyLounge
                    0
                  • Jenny1

                    Partial duplicate content and canonical tags

                    Hi - I am rebuilding a consumer website, and each product page will contain a unique product image, and a sentence or two about the product (and we tend to use a lot of the same words in different ways across products). I'd like to have a tabbed area below the product info that talks about the overall product line, and this content would be duplicate across all the product pages (a "Why use our products" type of thing). I'd have this duplicate content also living on its own URL's so they can be found alone in the SERP's. Question is, do I need to add the canonical tag to this page, since there's partial duplicate content on the product pages? And if I did that, would my product pages go un-indexed?? I understand how to handle completely duplicated content, it's the partial duplicate that I'm having difficulty figuring out.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny1
                    0
                  • Bryan_Loconto

                    When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?

                    What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto
                    0
                  • MBASydney

                    Duplicate content on sites from different countries

                    Hi, we have a client who currently has a lot of duplicate content with their UK and US website. Both websites are geographically targeted (via google webmaster tools) to their specific location and have the appropriate local domain extension. Is having duplicate content a major issue, since they are in two different countries and geographic regions of the world? Any statement from Google about this? Regards, Bill

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney
                    0
                  • Eric_R

                    Removing Content 301 vs 410 question

                    Hello, I was hoping to get the SEOmoz community’s advice on how to remove content most effectively from a large website. I just read a very thought-provoking thread in which Dr. Pete and Kerry22 answered a question about how to cut content in order to recover from Panda.  (http://www.seomoz.org/q/panda-recovery-what-is-the-best-way-to-shrink-your-index-and-make-google-aware). Kerry22 mentioned a process in which 410s would be totally visible to googlebot so that it would easily recognize the removal of content.  The conversation implied that it is not just important to remove the content, but also to give google the ability to recrawl that content to indeed confirm the content was removed (as opposed to just recrawling the site and not finding the content anywhere). This really made lots of sense to me and also struck a personal chord… Our website was hit by a later Panda refresh back in March 2012, and ever since then we have been aggressive about cutting content and doing what we can to improve user experience. When we cut pages, though, we used a different approach, doing all of the below steps:
                    1. We cut the pages
                    2. We set up permanent 301 redirects for all of them immediately.
                    3. And at the same time, we would always remove from our site all links pointing to these pages (to make sure users didn’t stumble upon the removed pages. When we cut the content pages, we would either delete them or unpublish them, causing them to 404 or 401, but this is probably a moot point since we gave them 301 redirects every time anyway.  We thought we could signal to Google that we removed the content while avoiding generating lots of errors that way… I see that this is basically the exact opposite of Dr. Pete's advice and opposite what Kerry22 used in order to get a recovery, and meanwhile here we are still trying to help our site recover.  We've been feeling that our site should no longer be under the shadow of Panda. So here is what I'm wondering, and I'd be very appreciative of advice or answers for the following questions: 1. Is it possible that Google still thinks we have this content on our site, and we continue to suffer from Panda because of this?  
                    Could there be a residual taint caused by the way we removed it, or is it all water under the bridge at this point because Google would have figured out we removed it (albeit not in a preferred way)? 2.  If there’s a possibility our former cutting process has caused lasting issues and affected how Google sees us, what can we do now (if anything) to correct the damage we did? Thank you in advance for your help,
                    Eric

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_R
                    1
                  • JustinTaylor88

                    Duplicate internal links on page, any benefit to nofollow

                    Link spam is naturally a hot topic amongst SEO's, particularly post Penguin. While digging around forums etc, I watched a video blog from Matt Cutts posted a while ago that suggests that Google only pays attention to the first instance of a link on the page As most websites will have multiple instances of a links (header, footer and body text), is it beneficial to nofollow the additional instances of the link? Also as the first instance of a link will in most cases be within the header nav, does that then make the content link text critical or can good on page optimisation be pulled from the title attribute? I would appreciate the experiences and thoughts Mozzers thoughts on this thanks in advance!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustinTaylor88
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.