Drupal SEO help - Duplicate content but very similar URLS?
-
Hi,
This is a very strange problem and not sure how it has happened. I am adding packages to my website and a duplicate page & almost identical URL is being picked up by Google.
E.g. the page I make is http://www.ukgirlthing.co.uk/hen-party/bristol-spa-rty-lunch-pampering-h... but then also appearing is http://www.ukgirlthing.co.uk/hen-party/bristol-spa-rty-pampering-hen-party. The node's are exactly the same, and if i edit one of them, the other also updates. You will notice that the URL's are almost exactly the same, except the words are re-organised slightly?
Shall i just delete the URL alias of the duplicate entry or is there something else which is making this happen?
These URL's are being picked up as duplicate content, although it's the same node!
Hope you can help,
Thank you!
-
Thanks for your help in this Yiannis.
We are now sifting through a lot of the duplicate alias's, creating redirects, and then going into delete them. Also altered the option going forward. I have decided to go with 'Do nothing' as i don't want it to make any URL alterations - That should be OK shouldnt it?
I guess this is case closed - Really appreciate your time and help in this mate!
Sunny
-
HI mate, sorry for the late response.
It should and I agree with you but Open Source was never perfect Drupal is more time consuming and complicated than Wordpress and there is a reason it refers to more "Geeky" people if I may say than the average WP user.
However the end sites are 20.000 times cleaner than any wordpress site and definitely worth the effort and time put into it!
-
No problem at all, I appreciate your help!
Got a question about this module - Why does it ask what to do with an alias, shouldn't it just keep the alias once i make a page, and even if i make changes to it, it stays the same? I don't understand the 'create a new...' etc.. and why it would do that.
When it creates the new alias, they both still point to the same node, so confused why it would make a new alias, rather than leaving the old one intact and not creating a new one?
Thanks!
-
Sorry for the late response, got hooked up with work
Try the 3rd option please which you delete old alias once you create a new one. Select the desirable URL as the new one and save.
Let me know if that solves the problem.
ps. If the old url is indexed and ranked you might want to set a 301 redirect just in case
-
No problems at all Yiannis, feel free to ask as much information as possible!
Just looked in the auto-path settings and found this (see image attachment)
I have a feel this maybe on the wrong setting? If so, what would you advise? Should i change to 'Do nothing, leave the old alias intact' and then go through URL Alias's, find the duplicate wrong ones and manually delete them? Then going forward, no more will occur?
Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Thanks!
-
Again check this with your developers as its been a while but I think it has to do with your setting on Pathauto (I cant log in to be 100% sure of what you've selected there). Did you install Pathauto after you manualy changed the url? or were both generated via pathauto? Also both pages have canonical urls set on those 2 different urls. Is this intended?
Sorry for blasting you with questions but as I cant see your dashbaord I am trying to get a clear picture
-
Hi Yiannis!
Thanks for this!
Modules we have are Pathauto, <label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url">Canonical URL and </label>****<label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url"><label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-seochecklist">SEO Checklist. Drupal version is 6.</label></label>
<label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url"><label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-seochecklist">I have recently requested our developers to install Global Redirect which I have read solves many other SEO issues with Drupal.</label></label>****<label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-canonical-url"><label style="display: inline !important;" for="edit-status-seochecklist"> </label></label>
I checked within the URL aliases and the 2 different aliases are showing, and are reporting the same node - See both image uploads.
Thanks
-
It's been a VERY long time since I did a web site on Drupal but I will give this a go. To start with can you please list me the modules you use on your web site? Most importantly do you use "Pathauto"? If yes I think there might be a conflict with your URL aliases. Let me know. Also is this Drupal 6 or 7?
-
Hi Andy,
If I make an amendment on one page, the other also shows the amendment, and so for this reason, i can't delete it as both will go. I think you maybe onto something, as in this might be caused by a plugin somewhere, so I will check this out - Moz has shown that I have hundreds of these duplicate pages which is worrying, although they don't physically exist (same node for duplicate).
Tricky one this is!
-
So the word "lunch" is being added to the URL, yet the page doesn't exist?
I'll be honest, I don't work on Drupal because it does do weird things from time to time so can't advise on this specific issue.
I would check the settings though and see if there is an SEO plugin (or site setting) that is causing this to write a second page. Also check to make sure this isn't a page that has been deleted and is still able to be crawled. Has that page with the word "lunch" in the URL, ever been created?
If it is easy enough to do, delete the page and re-create it to see if that clears the problem.
-Andy
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
-
Duplicate content issue
Hi, A client of ours has one URL for the moment (https://aalst.mobilepoint.be/) and wants to create a second one with exactly the same content (https://deinze.mobilepoint.be/). Will that mean Google punishes the second one because of duplicate content? What are the recommendations?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
We have 2 versions of URLs. we have the mobile and the desktop. is that a duplicate content?
Hi, Our website has two version of URLs. dektop: www.myexample.com and mobile www.myexample.com/m If you go to our site from a mobile device you will land on our mobile URL, if you go to our site from desktop computer you will land on a regular URL. Both urls have the same content. Is that considered duplicate? If yes, then what can I do to fix it? Also, both URLs are indexed by google. We have two separate XML sitemaps- one for desktop and one for mobile. Is that a good SEO practice?
Technical SEO | | Armen-SEO0 -
Who gets punished for duplicate content?
What happens if two domains have duplicate content? Do both domains get punished for it, or just one? If so, which one?
Technical SEO | | Tobii-Dynavox0 -
Duplicate content through product variants
Hi, Before you shout at me for not searching - I did and there are indeed lots of threads and articles on this problem. I therefore realise that this problem is not exactly new or unique. The situation: I am dealing with a website that has 1 to N (n being between 1 and 6 so far) variants of a product. There are no dropdown for variants. This is not technically possible short of a complete redesign which is not on the table right now. The product variants are also not linked to each other but share about 99% of content (obvious problem here). In the "search all" they show up individually. Each product-variant is a different page, unconnected in backend as well as frontend. The system is quite limited in what can be added and entered - I may have some opportunity to influence on smaller things such as enabling canonicals. In my opinion, the optimal choice would be to retain one page for each product, the base variant, and then add dropdowns to select extras/other variants. As that is not possible, I feel that the best solution is to canonicalise all versions to one version (either base variant or best-selling product?) and to offer customers a list at each product giving him a direct path to the other variants of the product. I'd be thankful for opinions, advice or showing completely new approaches I have not even thought of! Kind Regards, Nico
Technical SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hello, After crawling our site Moz is detecting high priority duplicate page content for our product and article listing pages, For example http://store.bmiresearch.com/bangladesh/power and http://store.bmiresearch.com/newzealand/power are being listed as duplicate pages although they have seperate URLs, page titles and H1 tags. They have the same product listed but I would have thought the differentiation in other areas would be sufficient for these to not be deemed as duplicate pages. Is it likely this issue will be impacting on our search rankings? If so are there any recommendations as to how this issue can be overcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | carlsutherland0 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hi, I just had my site crawled by the seomoz robot and it came back with some errors. Basically it seems the categories and dates are not crawling directly. I'm a SEO newbie here Below is a capture of the video of what I am talking about. Any ideas on how to fix this? Hkpekchp
Technical SEO | | mcardenal0 -
Duplicate Content based on www.www
In trying to knock down the most common errors on our site, we've noticed we do have an issue with dupicate content; however, most of the duplicate content errors are due to our site being indexed with www.www and not just www. I am perplexed as to how this is happening. Searching through IIS, I see nothing that would be causing this, and we have no hostname records setup that are www.www. Does anyone know of any other things that may cause this and how we can go about remedying it?
Technical SEO | | CredA0 -
Duplicate content on my home
Hello, I have duplication with my home page. It comes in two versions of the languages: French and English. http://www.numeridanse.tv/fr/ http://www.numeridanse.tv/en/ You should know that the home page are not directories : http://www.numeridanse.tv/ Google indexes the three versions: http://bit.ly/oqKT0H To avoid duplicating what is the best solution?
Technical SEO | | android_lyon
Have a version of the default language? Thanks a lot for your answers. Take care. A.0