Duplicate page titles in SEOMoz
-
My on page reports are showing a good number of duplicate title tags, but they are all because of a url tracking parameter that tells us which link the visitor clicked on. For example, http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside and http://www.example.com/example-product.htm are the same page, but are treated as to different urls in SEOMoz. This is creating "fake" number of duplicate page titles in my reports.
This has not been a problem with Google, but SEOMoz is treating it like this and it's confusing my data. Is there a way to specify this as a url parameter in the Moz software?
Or does anybody have another suggestion? Should I specify this in GWT and BWT?
-
The best way to handle this, for all crawlers including Google, Yahoo and Moz, is to make sure you have proper canonical tags on those URLs that point to the non-parameterized URL.
So http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside will have a canonical that points to http://www.example.com/example-product.htm
-
My understanding is that the Moz crawlers should be checking the canonical, in which case it will ignore duplicate content and title tag issues. If you find this is not the case with your crawl, please let our help team know at help @ moz.com
-
No, Moz's tool won't check the canonical to see if that would ignore this.
-
Do you think that setting a canonical url tag might help fix this?
-
Hi Robert,
Yes, I'm sorry but you're overlooking something. Ignoring parameters is something you should do in regards to SEO. It won't stop Google Analytics tracking these parameters.
-
I'm not sure why I'd want to ask google to ignore those parameters... we're explicitly adding the ones that they suggested we use from here:
The issue that I'm having is that Moz analytics is showing duplicate pages as an issue to resolve when the only difference is that these params exist.
Am I overlooking something here?
-
Hi Robert,
I wouldn't handle this via robots.txt if you only want to do this for Rogerbot. The best way to tell Google to ignore your UTM parameters is via Google Webmaster Tools. Under Crawl > URL Parameters you've got the option to add parameters that don't change any of the content and are solely used for tracking purposes.
-
I'm having a similar issue. Is there an example of how to add this to the robots.txt file to ignore the utm stuff for RogerBot?
Our scenario is that we send out PDFs with links to pages on our site and those links have utm parameters included... and are showing up as duplicate content.
Thanks in advance,
Robby
-
I think this is the answer I was looking for... Yeah, GWT already has a bunch of our parameters added, and hasn't had a problem with this one. It's not showing these pages as duplicate like SEOMoz does.
Thanks guys!
-
Hi,
What you might want to do to get rid of this issues within SEOMoz is add the parameters to your robots.txt file and specifically target the user agent of SEOMoz: Rogerbot. This way SEOMoz won't crawl the links with this parameter and by doing that also won't warn you about these duplicate titles.
Hope this helps!
Btw. As James already mentioned I would also recommend to configure these parameters within Google Webmaster Tools.
-
You could set it up in GWT but it sounds like you are using utm tags on internal links so you can see which physical links on a page are driving clicks. If that's the case a cleaner solution is to upgrade your Google Analytics code for enhanced link attribution. I'm assuming you are using GA but if so this will allow you to see which links are driving which clicks and won't create tons of duplicate page titles in SEOmoz.
See link: http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2558867
Let me know if you have questions,
JS
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
-
Page with "Missing Title Tag" isn't a page
Hello, I am going through the various errors that the Moz Pro Crawl report and some non-existent pages keep coming up in the report. For example, one error category is "Missing Title Tag" with one page identified. But this page http://www.immigroup.com/news/“http%3A/crs.yorku.ca”?page=2 isn't real. It would have been a 404 were there not a redirect for everything that is /news/gobbledygook to /news. So my question is: when moz (or GA for that matter) identifies these pages as "real" and having errors, do I need to take this seriously? And what do I do about it? Thanks! George
Moz Pro | | canadageorge0 -
Missing Page Titles On The Comptetive Link Comparison Page
Hello, When I do a Link Analysis using the SEOmoz tools I have noticed that most of the pages listed on the Top Pages tab show [No Data] for page title. Any idea why that could be? The page source of those pages have one and only one <title>tag.</p> <p>Thanks!</p></title>
Moz Pro | | andersvin0 -
On Page Analysis and Grading
I am new here and happy to be! My site is an ecommerce site with hundreds of products. I have set up campaigns to track specific products. For the on page analysis where SEOMOZ gives you a grade I have 2 urls showing. But 1 of the urls is getting an A, and 1 is getting a F. But they are the same url and obviously go to the same page. Any help would be appreciated!
Moz Pro | | Confections0 -
How do you use SEOmoz
I'm a newbie here. I've got a week left on my free trail. I really like SEOmoz, I might even love it a bit. 🙂 I'm trying to justify the cost. I usually don't spend money on my Internet Marketing. I've done it through finally buying some tools to help me get there. Massive change in the last year. I'm a long ways from getting rich YET though. 🙂 I've gone from $30 a month to $1000 a month in a year. So I think I'm on my way now. I'm trying to figure out why I should continue my subscription and actually start paying for it. If I were a developer I can certainly see why but the cost would so go way up. 🙂 I'm in the lowest level package with only five websites. I have 10 I'm working on. I know that's probably five to many at one time. I'm having a little trouble justifying the cost at this time. At my income level $100 a month is significant. I can see the value of seeing where my competition has backlinks. Sometimes my competition is Cnet. haha Well, I can beat them on a specific page at times. Hmm, can I search the URL list for links? Perhaps i can if I export it. That didn't occur to me. Now that could be of use if I can find my keywords. If their link is on Amazon though, I'm going to have trouble getting a link there. 🙂 Maybe I should work on less competitive links but I made good money last month with one page that was beating them. WAS beating them. How do you use SEOmoz? How do you justify the cost, that is offset the expense. If its not making me money i don't see the value. I can get a lot of this information for free but it sure is easier to get it here. Which saves me time. And the other tool i use isn't that good and not always reliable and slow. I've got a week left on my free trail. I had decided to let it go but now I'm reconsidering. $100 is a lot for me and I need to spend more on SEO outsourcing. I wonder if I wouldn't be better off dropping it for a while and then coming back. This certainly isn't mean to be a critical post at all. I'm looking for reasons to stay and make better use of it. Thanks for the thoughts, Rusty
Moz Pro | | RustyF0 -
Does the SEOMoz weekly crawl that highlights no meta description tag, take into account if there is a meta robots noindex,follow tag on the pages it indicates the missing meta descriptions?
The weekly crawl website report is telling me that there are pages that have missing meta description tags, yet I've implemented meta robots tags to 'noindex, follow' those pages which are visible in those page source files. As far as Google Is concerned, surely this then won't be a problem since it is being instructed NOT to consider these specific pages for indexing. I am assuming that the weekly SEOmoz website crawl is simply throwing the missing meta description crawl findings into its report without itself observing that the particluar URL references contain the meta robots 'noindex,follow' tag ???? Appreciate if you can clairfy if this is the case. It would help me understand that (at least in terms of my efforts towards Google) your own crawl doesn't observe the meta robots tag instruction, hence the resultant report's flagging the discrepancy.
Moz Pro | | callassist0 -
SEOmoz crawl error questions
I just got my first seomoz crawl report and was shocked at all the errors it generated. I looked into it and saw 7200 crawl errors. Most of them are duplicate page titles and duplicate page content. I clicked into the report and found that 97% of the errors were going off of one page It has ttp://legendzelda.net/forums/index.php/members/page__sort_key__joined__sort_order__asc__max_results__20 http://legendzelda.net/forums/index.php/members/page__sort_key__joined__sort_order__asc__max_results__20__quickjump__A__name_box__begins__name__A__quickjump__E etc Has 20 pages of slight variations of this link. It is all my members list or a search of my members list so it is not really duplicate content or anything. How can I get these errors to go away and make search my site is not taking a hit? The forum software I use is IPB.
Moz Pro | | NoahGlaser780 -
Excluding parameters from seomoz crawl?
I'm getting a ton of duplicate content errors because almost all of my pages feature a "print this page" link that adds the parameter "printable=Y" to the URL and displays a plain text version of the same page. Is there any way to exclude these pages from the crawl results?
Moz Pro | | AmericanOutlets0 -
Only Crawling 1 page?
Hi Guys, Any advice much appreciated on this! Recently set up a new campaign on my dashboard with just 5 keywords. The domain is brammer.co.uk and a quick Google site:brammer.co.uk shows a good amount of indexed pages. However - first seomoz tool crawl has only crawled 1 url!! "Last Crawl Completed: Apr. 12th, 2011 Next Crawl Starts: Apr. 17th, 2011" Any ideas what's stopping the tool crawl anymore of the site?? Cheers in advance.. J
Moz Pro | | lovealbatross0