Duplicate Title Tags and Meta Desc even with the correct Canonical Tag
-
I show a large/growing number of duplicate title tags and duplicate meta descriptions in my webmaster tools. I look at both pages
Both pages have the following canonical url:
<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.thatsmytopper.com/wedding-cake-toppers/theme-cake-toppers/beach-theme-cake-toppers.html" >
Why does this show up as a duplicate title tag and description to Google still?
-
Hello! I took into consideration both of your suggestions. I cant really do much with the cake toppers part because the products are what they are. I did try to reduce the number of time it was stated in the content but other than the product titles are trying to be descriptive.
In regards the noindex nofollow issue thank you for clarifying!
Ben
-
Hi Irving,
Doesn't this seem like an instance where Googlbot is not adhering to the "no index, no follow" suggestion? What do you think of my comment below? Is that scenario a possibility in this case?
I ddisagree that this page is spammy. I don't think that the content is an issue. It is, after all, a wedding cake topper. Just my two cents
Thanks,
Dana -
I believe this is happening because Google bot is interpreting these as two separate pages. Sure there's a canonical on one, so Googlebot might consider that one the source of the original content, however it's still seeing two pages and those pages do have identical Title and Meta Descriptions. In other words, just because there's a canonical tag doesn't pre-empt Google from identifying the duplicate content as a duplicate.
I know it seems counter-intuitive, but I am fairly certain this is the case. Interested to know what others have to say.
Dana
-
this should not be an issue at all since both pages are noindex, nofollow
i suggest you change them to noindex, follow though for better spidering
this is way too spammy too. google may suppress your rankings for "cake toppers"
[http://www.thatsmytopper.com/wedding-cake-toppers/theme-cake-toppers/beach-theme-cake-toppers.html](view-source:http://www.thatsmytopper.com/wedding-cake-toppers/theme-cake-toppers/beach-theme-cake-toppers.html)" />
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
-
Should the canonical tag for the redirected pages be changed
Hi! Does anyone know if the canonical tag of the old redirected page should be changed, and include the URL of the new destination? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | AnahitG0 -
How Often Can I Change My Meta Titles? (Product Discounts)
Hello, I have an ecommerce website. Due to discounts and sales on most of my products, the discount rates change very often. Some products have %10 discounts for 3 days and then same products might have %50 discounts for another 5 days. I would like to show these product specific discounts on Meta Titles and Descriptions dynamically. My system will automatically update the Meta Titles once the discount on a product changes. My question is, how often can I change the Meta Titles? Is changing them (only discount rates = 1word) too often bad for my SEO? What is Goolge's approach on this? Thank you in advance for all your help. Best,
Technical SEO | | yigitgok
Yigit0 -
Easy Question: regarding no index meta tag vs robot.txt
This seems like a dumb question, but I'm not sure what the answer is. I have an ecommerce client who has a couple of subdirectories "gallery" and "blog". Neither directory gets a lot of traffic or really turns into much conversions, so I want to remove the pages so they don't drain my page rank from more important pages. Does this sound like a good idea? I was thinking of either disallowing the folders via robot.txt file or add a "no index" tag or 301redirect or delete them. Can you help me determine which is best. **DEINDEX: **As I understand it, the no index meta tag is going to allow the robots to still crawl the pages, but they won't be indexed. The supposed good news is that it still allows link juice to be passed through. This seems like a bad thing to me because I don't want to waste my link juice passing to these pages. The idea is to keep my page rank from being dilluted on these pages. Kind of similar question, if page rank is finite, does google still treat these pages as part of the site even if it's not indexing them? If I do deindex these pages, I think there are quite a few internal links to these pages. Even those these pages are deindexed, they still exist, so it's not as if the site would return a 404 right? ROBOTS.TXT As I understand it, this will keep the robots from crawling the page, so it won't be indexed and the link juice won't pass. I don't want to waste page rank which links to these pages, so is this a bad option? **301 redirect: **What if I just 301 redirect all these pages back to the homepage? Is this an easy answer? Part of the problem with this solution is that I'm not sure if it's permanent, but even more importantly is that currently 80% of the site is made up of blog and gallery pages and I think it would be strange to have the vast majority of the site 301 redirecting to the home page. What do you think? DELETE PAGES: Maybe I could just delete all the pages. This will keep the pages from taking link juice and will deindex, but I think there's quite a few internal links to these pages. How would you find all the internal links that point to these pages. There's hundreds of them.
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Why do I get duplicate page title errors.
I keep getting duplicate page title errors on www.etraxc.com/ and www.etraxc.com/default.asp, which are both pointing to the same page. How do i resolve this and how bad is it hurting my SEO.
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Worpress Tags Duplicate Content
I just fixed a tags duplicate content issue. I have noindexed the tags. Was wondering if anyone has ever fixed this issue and how long did it take you to recover from it? Just kind of want to know for a piece of mind.
Technical SEO | | deaddogdesign0 -
Duplicate Page Content and Titles
A few weeks ago my error count went up for Duplicate Page Content and Titles. 4 errors in all. A week later the errors were gone... But now they are back. I made changes to the Webconfig over a month ago but nothing since. SEOmoz is telling me the duplicate content is this http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/ and http://www.antiquebanknotes.com Thanks for any advise! This is the relevant web.config. <rewrite><rules><rule name="CanonicalHostNameRule1"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www.antiquebanknotes.com$" negate="true"></add></conditions>
Technical SEO | | Banknotes
<action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.antiquebanknotes.com="" {r:1"="">http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/{R:1}" />
</action></match></rule>
<rule name="Default Page" enabled="true" stopprocessing="true"><match url="^default.aspx$"><conditions logicalgrouping="MatchAll"><add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="GET"></add></conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="/"></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite>0 -
Does daily changing of price information in a title tag damage SEO?
Hi I'm thinking about changing the title tag for all my pages daily, updating it with the most current price information. (As I think this could improve CTR) All the other keywords in the title tag would remain the same however. Does anyone think this is likely to cause a problem with regards to ranking in Google and other search engines? Thanks for any / all replies! Cheers
Technical SEO | | joeprice0 -
I am wondering if I should use the Meta 'Cache" tag?
I am working on removing unnecessary meta tags that have little impact on SEO and I have read so many mixed reviews about using the Meta 'Cache' tag. I need to informative information on whether or not this tag should be used.
Technical SEO | | ImagetecLP0