How to remove duplicate content, which is still indexed, but not linked to anymore?
-
Dear community
A bug in the tool, which we use to create search-engine-friendly URLs (sh404sef) changed our whole URL-structure overnight, and we only noticed after Google already indexed the page.
Now, we have a massive duplicate content issue, causing a harsh drop in rankings. Webmaster Tools shows over 1,000 duplicate title tags, so I don't think, Google understands what is going on.
<code>Right URL: abc.com/price/sharp-ah-l13-12000-btu.html Wrong URL: abc.com/item/sharp-l-series-ahl13-12000-btu.html (created by mistake)</code>
After that, we ...
- Changed back all URLs to the "Right URLs"
- Set up a 301-redirect for all "Wrong URLs" a few days later
Now, still a massive amount of pages is in the index twice. As we do not link internally to the "Wrong URLs" anymore, I am not sure, if Google will re-crawl them very soon.
What can we do to solve this issue and tell Google, that all the "Wrong URLs" now redirect to the "Right URLs"?
Best, David
-
Yes David your link is very helpful..
-
Found the perfect answer:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/uncrawled-301s-a-quick-fix-for-when-relaunches-go-too-well
-
Thanks a lot, Sanket.
Do you think, it might help, to submit a sitemap, which also contains the "Wrong URLs", so we can trigger a recrawl of those pages? Maybe then Google will notice that there is a 301-redirect.
-
Hi Davin
The best thing in this situation is to wait for sometime more.. Because you just done the redirection of wrong url's to right url's so it will take some time. In webmaster tool you will see the changes later because the data in webmaster tool are updates on 15 days or monthly basis, depends on the website so you need to wait. The url that was 301 redirected should not appear in the search results so the problem of duplication will be sorted out shortly so dont worry. Also you can verify the redirection are done correctly or not from this redirect checker tool http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/.
I have one suggestion to crawl your website pages fastly : Maximize the "Crawl Rate" under Settings option of webmaster tool.
Hope my response would help you. If need any help feel free to ask.
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
-
How to fix Duplicate Content Warnings on Pagination? Indexed Pagination?
Hi all! So we have a Wordpress blog that properly has pagination tags of rel="prev" and rel="next" set up for pages, but we're still getting crawl errors with MOZ for duplicate content on all of our pagination pages. Also, we are having all of our pages indexed as well. I'm talking pages as deep as page 89 for the home page. Is this something I should ignore? Is it hurting my SEO potentially? If so, how can I start tackling it for a fix? Would "noindex" or "nofollow" be a good idea? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jampaper0 -
Duplicate content but different pages?
Hi there! Im getting LOTS of "duplicate content" pages but the thing is they are different pages. My website essentially is a niche video hosting site with embedded videos from Youtube. Im working on adding personal descriptions to each video but keeping the same video title (should I re-word it from the original also? Any help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sarevme0 -
Penalties for duplicate content
Hello!We have a website with various city tours and activities listed on a single page (http://vaiduokliai.lt/). The list changes accordingly depending on filtering (birthday in Vilnius, bachelor party in Kaunas, etc.). The URL doesn't change. Content changes dynamically. We need to make URL visible for each category, then optimize it for different keywords (for example city tours in Vilnius for a list of tours and activities in Vilnius with appropriate URL /tours-in-Vilnius).The problem is that activities overlap very often in different categories, so there will be a lot of duplicate content on different pages. In such case, how severe penalty could be for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpuzakov0 -
Penalized for Similar, But Not Duplicate, Content?
I have multiple product landing pages that feature very similar, but not duplicate, content and am wondering if this would affect my rankings in a negative way. The main reason for the similar content is three-fold: Continuity of site structure across different products Similar, or the same, product add-ons or support options (resulting in exactly the same additional tabs of content) The product itself is very similar with 3-4 key differences. Three examples of these similar pages are here - although I do have different meta-data and keyword optimization through the pages. http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099pro.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099proEnt.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prodW2pro.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Consensus on Paying to Remove Links
Hi all, For discussion... I am painstakingly working my way through a link profile, highlighting 'unnatural links' and contacting webmasters to try and get the links removed - I haven't got as far as 'disavow' or a 'Reconsideration Request' I have found a large number (around 150) of links from http://www.bookmarks4you.com and when I have attempted to contact the site for link removals I have had a payment request in order to do so. Now the amount being requested is low and so it may be worthwhile, however, I wondered what the consensus was with regards to this sort of demand? I know I could simply add the links to my 'disavow list' but for the sake of a small payment, I could get rid of them much quicker! Also, the majority of sites that I am contacting only have a contact from as opposed to an email address that I can use directly - what I am doing is taking a screen print of each contact form in order to have proof that I am actually doing the 'hard graft' as opposed to simply adding sites to a disavow list - is this a worthwhile exercise? Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0 -
Duplicate content on index.htm page
How do I avoid duplicate content on the index.htm page . I need to redirect the spider from the /index.htm file to the main root of http://www.manandhisvan.com.au and hence avoid duplicate content. Does anyone know of a foolproof way of achieving this without me buggering up the complete site Cheers Freddy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fatfreddy0 -
Load balancing - duplicate content?
Our site switches between www1 and www2 depending on the server load, so (the way I understand it at least) we have two versions of the site. My question is whether the search engines will consider this as duplicate content, and if so, what sort of impact can this have on our SEO efforts? I don't think we've been penalised, (we're still ranking) but our rankings probably aren't as strong as they should be. The SERPs show a mixture of www1 and www2 content when I do a branded search. Also, when I try to use any SEO tools that involve a site crawl I usually encounter problems. Any help is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisHillfd0