Reinforcing Rel Canonical? (Fixing Duplicate Content)
-
Hi Mozzers,
We're having trouble with duplicate content between two sites, so we're looking to add some oomph to the rel canonical link elements we put on one of our sites pointing towards the other to help speed up the process and give Google a bigger hint.
Would adding a hyperlink on the "copying" website pointing towards the "original" website speed this process up?
Would we get in trouble if added about 80,000 links (1 on each product page) with a link to the matching product on the other site? For example, we could use text like "Buy XY product on Other Brand Name and receive 10% off!"
-
Have you seen a corresponding drop-off in the ListFinder pages over that time. If the canonical is kicking in, you should see some of those pages fall out as more ConsumerBase pages kick in.
Is there a reason your canonical'ing from the more indexed site to the less indexed one. It could be a mixed signal if Google things that ListFinder is a more powerful or authoritative site. Cross-domain can get tricky fast.
Unfortunately, beyond NOINDEX'ing, it's about your best option, and certainly one of your safest. It's really hard to predict what the combo of cross-domain canonical plus link would do. From a dupe content standpoint, it's risk free. From the standpoint of creating 80K links from one of your sites to another of your sites, it's a little risky (don't want to look like a link network). Since you're only talking two sites, though, it's probably not a huge issue, especially with the canonical already in place.
Google interprets cross-domain canonical heavily, so it can be a little hard to predict and control. Interestingly, the ConsumerBase site has higher Domain Authority, but the page you provided has lower Page Authority than its "sister" page. Might be a result of your internal linking structure giving more power to the ListFinder pages.
-
Great post Peter.
Here are some links of a product that is on both sites. Hopefully this will help you provide some more insight.
http://www.consumerbase.com/mailing-lists/shutterbugsphotography-enthusiasts-mailing-list.html
http://www.listfinder.com/mailing-lists/shutterbugsphotography-enthusiasts-mailing-list.htmlThe ListFinder pages are currently mostly indexed (70k out of 80k) which makes me think they are different enough from one another to not warrant a penalty.
The ConsumerBase pages started indexing well when we added the rel canonical code to LF (went from about 2k pages to 30k in early December, but since 1/2/2013 we have seen a dropoff in indexed pages down to about 5k.
Thanks!
-
With products, it's a bit hard to say. Cross-domain canonical could work, but Google can be a bit finicky about it. Are you seeing the pages on both sides in the Google index, or just one or the other? Sorry, it's a bit hard to diagnose without seeing a sample URL.
If this were more traditional syndicated content, you could set a cross-domain canonical and link the copy back to the source. That would provide an additional signal of which site should get credit. With your case, though, I haven't seen a good example of that - I don't think it would be harmful, though (to add the link, that is).
If you're talking about 80K links, then you've got 80K+ near-duplicate product pages. Unfortunately, it could go beyond just having one or the other version get filtered out. This could trigger a Panda or Panda-like penalty against the site in general. The cross-domain canonical should help prevent this, whereas the links probably won't. I do think it's smart to be proactive, though.
Worst case, you could META NOINDEX the product pages on one site - they'd still be available to users, but wouldn't rank. I think the cross-domain canonical is probably preferable here, but if you ran into trouble, META NOINDEX would be the more severe approach (and could help solve that trouble).
-
Yes, sir - that would be correct.
www.consumerbase.com and www.listfinder.com.
The sites are not 100% identical, just the content on the product pages.
-
are these two sites on the same root domain? it seems like most of the feedback you're getting are from people who are assuming they are however, it sounds to me like there are two separate domains
-
Zora,
Google accepts cross domain canonical as long as the pages have more similar content.
It is not necessary to add hyperlink pointing to canonical page. If your sites are crawler friendly, canonical hints will change search results very quickly.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
Ensure that Google doesn't find any issue with your Sitemaps. If you add products frequently, submit the updated Sitemap following the same schedule.
All the best.
-
I am sorry i am not understanding why you need a rel = in this matter if the sites are two different sites?
What is your end goal ?
-
We chose rel canonical because we still want users to be able to visit and navigate through site 2.
They are both e-commerce sites with similar products, not exactly identical sites.
-
Zora. Totally understand, but my input and what Majority of people do is redirect the traffic.
A server side htaccess 301 Redirect is your BEST choice here.
Why dont you want o use a 301 and prefer a Rel, curious on what your take is on this.
and Thanks for the rel update info i didnt know
-
Thanks for the info Hampig, I'll definitely take a look.
Rel Canonical actually works cross domain now, Google updated it from when it originally came out.
-
Zora hope you are doing well.
I came across this video about a few weeks ago. I think this is suppose to be found under Webmaster tools although i have not used it, i think it might be the best solution to get googles attention to portions of the pages and what they are suppose to be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrEJds3QeTw
Ok but i am confused a bit. You have two different domains ?
or two version of the same domain?
Because from the sound of it you have two different domains and using rel = con wont work and you would have to do a 301 redirect. Even for my sites when i change the pages around i use 301 redirect for the same existing site.
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
-
Big retailers and duplicate content
Hello there! I was wondering if you guys have experience with big retailers sites fetching data via API (PDP content etc.) from another domain which is also sharing the same data with other multiple sites. If each retailer has thousands on products, optimizing PDP content (even in batches) is quite of a cumbersome task and rel="canonical" pointing to original domain will dilute the value. How would you approach this type of scenario? Looking forward to read your suggestions/experiences Thanks a lot! Best Sara
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SaraCoppola1 -
Duplicate content with URLs
Hi all, Do you think that is possible to have duplicate content issues because we provide a unique image with 5 different URLs ? In the HTML code pages, just one URL is provide. It's enough for that Google don't see the other URLs or not ? Example, in this article : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112 The same image is available on: http://cdn-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize1-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize2-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg http://resize3-parismatch.ladmedia.fr/img/var/news/storage/images/paris-match/people/kim-kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix-1092112/15629236-1-fre-FR/Kim-Kardashian-sa-securite-n-a-pas-de-prix.jpg Thank you very much for your help. Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
How best to handle (legitimate) duplicate content?
Hi everyone, appreciate any thoughts on this. (bit long, sorry) Am working on 3 sites selling the same thing...main difference between each site is physical location/target market area (think North, South, West as an example) Now, say these 3 sites all sell Blue Widgets, and thus all on-page optimisation has been done for this keyword. These 3 sites are now effectively duplicates of each other - well the Blue Widgets page is at least, and whist there are no 'errors' in Webmaster Tools am pretty sure they ought to be ranking better than they are (good PA, DA, mR etc) Sites share the same template/look and feel too AND are accessed via same IP - just for good measure 🙂 So - to questions/thoughts. 1 - Is it enough to try and get creative with on-page changes to try and 'de-dupe' them? Kinda tricky with Blue Widgets example - how many ways can you say that? I could focus on geographical element a bit more, but would like to rank well for Blue Widgets generally. 2 - I could, i guess, no-index, no-follow, blue widgets page on 2 of the sites, seems a bit drastic though. (or robots.txt them) 3 - I could even link (via internal navigation) sites 2 and 3 to site 1 Blue Widgets page and thus make 2 blue widget pages redundant? 4 - Is there anything HTML coding wise i could do to pull in Site 1 content to sites 2 and 3, without cloaking or anything nasty like that? I think 1- is first thing to do. Anything else? Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Capote0 -
Duplicate content even with 301 redirects
I know this isn't a developer forum but I figure someone will know the answer to this. My site is http://www.stadriemblems.com and I have a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file to redirect all non-www to www and it works great. But SEOmoz seems to think this doesn't apply to my blog, which is located at http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog It doesn't seem to make sense that I'd need to place code in every .htaccess file of every sub-folder. If I do, what code can I use? The weirdest part about this is that the redirecting works just fine; it's just SEOmoz's crawler that doesn't seem to be with the program here. Does this happen to you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Duplicate content
I have just read http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world and I would like to know which option is the best fit for my case. I have the website http://www.hotelelgreco.gr and every image in image library http://www.hotelelgreco.gr/image-library.aspx has a different url but is considered duplicate with others of the library. Please suggest me what should i do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | socrateskirtsios0 -
Duplicate page content and duplicate pate title
Hi, i am running a global concept that operates with one webpage that has lot of content, the content is also available on different domains, but with in the same concept. I think i am getting bad ranking due to duplicate content, since some of the content is mirrored from the main page to the other "support pages" and they are almost 200 in total. Can i do some changes to work around this or am i just screwed 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smartmedia0 -
Any penalty for having rel=canonical tags on every page?
For some reason every webpage of our website (www.nathosp.com) has a rel=canonical tag. I'm not sure why the previous SEO manager did this, but we don't have any duplicate content that would require a canonical tag. Should I remove these tags? And if so, what's the advantage - or disadvantage of leaving them in place? Thank you in advance for your help. -Josh Fulfer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhans1 -
Pop Up Pages Being Indexed, Seen As Duplicate Content
I offer users the opportunity to email and embed images from my website. (See this page http://www.andertoons.com/cartoon/6246/ and look under the large image for "Email to a Friend" and "Get Embed HTML" links.) But I'm seeing the ensuing pop-up pages (Ex: http://www.andertoons.com/embed/5231/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=370&width=700&modal=true and http://www.andertoons.com/email/6246/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=432&width=700&modal=true) showing up in Google. Even worse, I think they're seen as duplicate content. How should I deal with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andertoons0